Howdy,

I was hoping to get some feedback on the first couple paragraphs of my short story. Any feedback is appreciated!

Thanks

Story: The Edicts of Nilan

Clara entered the city square on her way to the builders' complex. The square was a sprawling open space surrounded by smooth grey and white marble buildings, each serving as a complex for various domains.

At the center of the city square stood a matte black monolith, its surface so dark it seemed to devour the daylight around it. To many, the structure possessed an unsettling presence, as if it were slowly consuming the very space it occupied. A constant hum resonated in the bones of people nearby—at least many swore that it did. Like always, Clara avoided looking at it as she continued walking.

Clara passed by many workers, students, and automata creatures. Like ants, they busily hurried in a chaotic scramble, their footsteps along the white marble walkways echoing throughout the city square.

A smiling boy ran towards Clara. A small wire metal automata dog trotted at his side. "Clara, Clara! Did you hear the news?" the boy yelled. He wore the common white robes for Brimba adolescents.

She saw the worry in his eyes. "Is the news that Terick Wellbery doesn't know how to put on his robes properly?" Giggling, Clara bent down to fix the hastily adorned robe.

"I'm serious, this is big!" Terick retorted as he swiped at Clara's hand. The automata dog pranced about, clearly excited by the interaction.

"They are amending The Edicts of Nilan!"

"What?"

"I know!"

"Wait that doesn't make any sense. Who told you this" Clara's eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

"I overheard my dad talking with another domain representative last night."

"What else did you hear?"

"Not much. '*Blah blah upcoming big Edicts amendment blah blah*'" Terick playfully mimicked the voice of his dad.

Almost involuntarily, Clara shifted her gaze to the monolith. Carved into it were 'The Edicts of Nilan'.

She recalled what every student learns in academia about the edicts. The Edicts of Nilan were an ancient scripture written long ago, which enumerated a simple list of aphorisms or edicts. In total, there were 1,263 edicts, which collectively set forth codes, cultural motivations, and personal dogmas that society ought to adhere to for a fair and well-put-together society. The effectiveness and importance of the Edicts could not be overstated. Many historians attributed the several-thousand-year longevity of Brimba solely to The Edicts.

Clara allowed her eyes to drift to the first edict, etched at the top of the monolith:

>'Provide mankind an environment through which they can derive purpose.' - **The Edicts of Nilan, Edict 1 verse 1.**

Clara gently placed her hand on Terick's head. "Terick you must have miss heard. An amendment hasn't been made in over 200 years and before that 500. It doesn't make sense to make changes now."

This is a short story told in four parts. Don't read if you're afraid of clowns.

Part One

“Are we really going to see an Italian?”

“Yes, just don’t tell your mother,” said his father.

That wasn’t a problem, as little Jimmy Oswin hated his mother. She made him go to church. Beyond that, she didn’t let him play with the Chinese kid who lived across the street. His mother never would have allowed Jimmy to go to the circus because it was Satanic. They were few and far between, but Jimmy loved the adventures he shared with just his dad. The friends Jimmy was allowed to play with also liked his dad, and Jimmy always felt a sense of superiority when his dad would swing by in his pickup truck and pick Jimmy up while he was in the middle of playing ball with his friends in the cul-de-sac. Despite sharing the same strawberry blonde hair as his mother, he did everything he could to emulate his father.

It wasn’t the clowns or midgets or lions that excited Jimmy about the circus—it was Luigi the Italian. Jimmy had never seen an Italian before, at least not in real life, and his mom didn’t let him watch many movies, so he barely had any idea of what they looked like. About two years ago, Jimmy's mom disowned his older sister for dating an Italian boy because Mom wasn't supportive of mixed-race relationships. For weeks, his sister and mother lived under the same roof, refusing to speak to one another. His sister ran away from Detroit once she was convinced their mom was responsible for getting Antonio drafted to fight in Vietnam. After Jimmy’s sister ran away from home, his mother wouldn’t even cook spaghetti for dinner anymore. Jimmy hadn’t seen his sister since.

They pulled into the parking lot, and Jimmy caught his first glimpse of the giant circus tent.

“Holy crud,” he said.

“Excited kiddo?” asked his dad.

Jimmy nodded his head voraciously.

“And when Mom asks what we did today, what do you tell her?”

“We were at the hospital visiting grandma.”

His father rustled Jimmy’s hair.

Somehow, Dad had scored seats almost dead center and only three rows from the front. The show opened with some juggling. Jimmy knew a kid in his class who could juggle, so he wasn't that impressed. The bears riding bicycles were much more impressive. He had to admit that the trapeze artists were fine and all, but he was getting impatient waiting for Luigi the Italian.

There were several close calls where Jimmy was convinced one of the trapeze artists would miss catching their partner, and the performer would fall to their doom.

“Aren’t they scared to die?” he asked his father.

"They train all their lives. I'm pretty sure they never stop being completely scared, but these routines are second nature to them.

The performance ended, and the little boy's impatience grew. After some more jugglers and animals balancing on various stools and balls, a tiny little car entered the area with silly music accompanying it. The car did several doughnuts before skidding to a stop. The doors flew open, and a clown ran out, followed by another and another. Jimmy lost count after the seventh clown exited the vehicle. Some of the clowns flopped around in giant shoes, while others started climbing the shoulders of their comrades and making human pyramids. One kept dropping things. Clowns kept getting out of the car. Suddenly, things got quiet. Jimmy couldn't quite explain what was happening but knew something was wrong. As clowns were still hopping out of the car, there was a bright flash. A violent explosion engulfed the car, sending a mushroom-like cloud of red-orange flames rising toward the top of the tent. The blast was so powerful it lifted the car up at least twenty feet. Fiery clowns fell from the car. When the car landed, it smashed several of the clowns on the floor. Several clowns ran, twisted, and fell, unable to escape the flames consuming their bodies. Only the long shoes and stubs of legs inside them remained of one clown; the rest of his body had been blown to oblivion. All the while, one of the clowns with a large flower attached to his chest was squeezing it to shoot water onto the burning clowns, but the water stream wasn't enough to have any effect. Similarly, another clown car pulled up with a firehose attached to it. A clown unraveled the hose and turned the knob, but only paper snakes shot out of the hose. None of that carnage was what caught Jimmy's attention. Among all the death and viscera, Jimmy saw something that shocked him so thoroughly he momentarily lost the ability to speak and breathe.

While clowns were dying, one stood with his arms up, and a shocked expression on his face (the clown's face makeup was painted to look shocked, but the man underneath the makeup was shocked too), and his hands held up as if surrendering. The explosive flames reached him, but instead of being burned or torn to bits, the clown turned into a skeleton. That's the only way Jimmy could describe it. His skin didn't burn off, leaving only flesh and bones. No. One second, there were clothes and flesh, and the next instant, only a skeleton remained in place, holding the same shocked look with its hands in the air. Jimmy couldn't make sense of how that was possible. How did the clown go from man to skeleton just like that?

On the ride home, it was already dark. The streets were quiet except for the occasional squad car and ambulance heading toward the circus. Neither father nor son spoke for about ten minutes. It was Dad who finally broke the silence.

“Your mother can never, ever know about this.”

Jimmy said nothing for a while. He couldn’t stop thinking about the skeleton.

“Dad, how did that one clown turn into a skeleton?”

“I don’t know, pal. I just don’t know.”

Jimmy’s parents divorced shortly before the boy’s eighth birthday. The clown incident was never brought up, but even from an early age, the boy could see his parents’ incessant fighting and differing worldviews were bound to reach a breaking point. Before Dad left home for the last time, the family received a postcard from his sister Tiffany in India. She had decided to become a Hindu and was training in the ways of yoga.

Something happened that Jimmy didn’t expect. His mom was being unusually nice to him.

“What would you like to do for your birthday hon?”

“Oh, you know, the usual,” he said.

He was drawing a map of the solar system and later planned to color it in with his crayons. He was shocked to learn that Ganymede, a mere moon, was bigger than Mercury. He would be sure to ask his teacher about this when he went to class on Monday.

“Wouldn’t you like to invite any friends over?”

“Really?” he set his pencil down.

Was this a trap? She never let him have friends over for his birthday.

“Sure, wouldn’t you like that?”

That night, Jimmy and his mother watched a movie together on the television. It was about a foul-mouthed, alcoholic ex-professional baseball player who coaches a little league team. Even with censorship, Jimmy couldn't believe some of the rude words he was hearing. Furthermore, he couldn't believe his mom was letting him watch it.

His birthdays had always been quiet affairs. Mom would buy a cake, give him new clothes as gifts, and make him talk to Grandma on the phone. Jimmy woke up on the day of his eighth birthday to see a giant red and yellow bouncy castle in his backyard. He ran to his mom, still in his pajamas, wondering if he was breaking any kind of law by going inside. She smiled in affirmation, and he jumped for a full three hours before any party guests arrived.

Seven of his favorite school friends and two neighborhood friends arrived. Mom still wouldn’t let him invite the Chinese kid across the street. Hank next door volunteered his services to grill hamburgers and hotdogs.

The most fun part of the day was when Hank unplugged the bouncy castle while all the children were still inside, and it deflated on them. Between laughing and screaming, several of the kids must have thought they would die inside that castle.

“Boys, before we open presents, I have a surprise for you. Jimmy, close your eyes,” said Mom.

Jimmy closed his eyes. He heard the back gate creak open and shut.

“Open!”

He opened his eyes. Before him, only an inch or two from his face stood a clown. The clown had a giant, red smile. The clown tooted the giant horn that was attached to his shoulder. Jimmy’s heart stopped. All background noise ceased to exist. Once more, he felt he’d never be able to speak again.

Jimmy went to the bathroom to splash water on his face. As clear as day, he saw how the explosion turned a man into a skeleton. Jimmy had no idea how long he had spent inside the house, but when he came outside, the clown was in the middle of tying balloon animals for the other party guests. His back was to Jimmy. Jimmy had grabbed a canister of lighter fluid from inside the garage and poured it on the clown. The clown did not react; he was consumed by entertaining the children with his balloons. Once Jimmy was sure enough fluid had been poured on the clown, he struck a match and tossed it at the clown's feet. The clown lit up like a Roman candle but did not turn into a skeleton.

Jimmy spent the next eight years at the Michigan Psychiatric Center for Mentally Deranged Boys. Once given the all-clear to be discharged, he finished his high school years at an all-boys boarding school in Vermont. He graduated valedictorian and was accepted into West Point.

While at the center for the mentally deranged, he read every book he could about the history of warfare, military strategy, and famous battlefield commanders.

When the Gulf War broke out, Jimmy was twenty-three and already a captain. He was the commanding officer of Headquarters Company in the Task Force 1-41 Infantry unit. The unit notably engaged in counter-reconnaissance missions and was the first coalition force to breach Saudi Arabian borders and face Iraqi ground forces on enemy territory. Jimmy’s (known as Captain Oswin to his men) tactical mindset was instrumental in the Task Force’s destruction of the Iraqi Jihad Corps.

Due to the unit's success in Desert Storm, Captain Oswin was fast-tracked to Major and made executive officer of the battalion. While an expert marksman and brilliant tactician, combat did not excite him. Those who knew him thought his behavior odd and erratic when he put in his papers for a transfer. He was the ideal American fighting machine. But Captain Oswin was more interested in developing weapons than using them.

During the war, the captain witnessed the usage of the MIM-104C Patriot missile system for the first time in history. They had been used to intercept the Scud missiles fired at Israel. Not to discredit the ground troops, but the Iraqi army (at that time one of the largest on Earth) had been defeated in no small part due to advancements in aerial weapons technology. It was also the first time stealth tech and space systems support were used against modern, integrated air defense systems. Oswin felt that this was the sector he needed to be in.

Oswin sold his talents to Boeing Defense and the McDonnell Douglas Corporation, designing and improving new weapons for NATO forces. He was instrumental in the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM). He took so-called dumb bombs and converted them into all-weather precision-guided munitions.

1999 was to be a monumental year for Oswin. After years of tinkering with the JDAMs, they would finally make their debut with Operation Allied Force. Oswin found himself grateful for the peoples of the former Yugoslav states for their constant propensity for bloodshed. In addition to manufacturing weapons, he found incredible success in selling them. He had accumulated a not insignificant amount of wealth during the Bosnian War (selling arms to both sides of the conflict). But Operation Allied Force would be a true testing ground of the weapons he'd been developing.

Both sides of the conflict, the KLA and Yugoslav forces, had broken the ceasefire only two months after signing the agreement. Old hatreds, whether linked to religion, old alliances based on ethnic divides, linguistic divides, or blood feuds within the same tribe, would ensure that tension and violence would consume the Balkan peninsula until the end of time.

During the NATO bombing campaign against the Yugoslav (Serb) targets, Oswin’s JDAMs would be deployed. Also making their debut appearance in this campaign were the B-2 Spirit stealth bombers. During the bombing campaign, stealth bombers launched nearly 700 JDAMs with 96% reliability, resulting in 87% of intended targets struck. They were also inexpensive to make, and because of their success rate in the operation, the demand increase and profit margins made Oswin obscenely wealthy.

After signing a contract with the Japanese Self-Defense Force, Oswin was exhausted. Doing business in Japan was always a precarious affair, because prior agreements in the land of the Rising Sun didn't hold the same weight they did elsewhere, and it wasn't until pen hit paper before an audience of lawyers that one knew business was moving forward. Not wanting to spend a minute more on the island, he got on his jet and set out for France for some well-needed R&R.

He loved the French. Had he not been born American, he would have willed himself to exit his mother's womb a Frenchman. While at the psychiatric ward, he taught himself French. Upon completing high school and before entering West Point, he spent a month in the south of France, primarily in Bordeaux. He got into several heated debates about how French food was superior in every way to Italian cuisine.

Like weapons manufacturing, everything from the ingredients to the parings to the presentation was essential to French cuisine.

In Cestas, a town not far from Bordeaux, he sat in an outdoor café, sipping on a Saint-Émilion and eating olives and saucisson. A mime was performing for some tourists. Oswin was merely killing time before his date.

Oswin met his date at nine p.m. in a secluded, windowless restaurant. It was more of a tavern than a restaurant, but the food options weren’t half bad. When his date walked through the door, it was impossible to mistake the person for anyone else. They wore extremely baggy yellow parachute pants, which contrasted greatly with the incredibly tight white T-shirt on which I can’t say no was written. The shoes were bright red and thick, pushing size twenty-five in length. The person's hair was bright red and a mess of different shapes, shooting off in different directions. Lastly, their face was caked in white makeup, but fascinatingly enough, rather than bright red face paint around the mouth, it was dark black, giving the clown a bit of a sinister edge. The clown took a seat at the corner table on the opposite end of Oswin. A few patrons turned to glance at the clown before returning to their drinks. The clown introduced himself as Jacques.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” said Oswin.

“Likewise,” said Jacques. “I have to admit, I was a little nervous before meeting you. My agent said that there was a businessman who wanted to date a clown. As you can imagine, my imagination ran wild. I was expecting the worst kind of deranged pervert. You're quite handsome."

Jacques had a distinct Quebecois accent. It was hard to guess under all the makeup, but Oswin's estimates indicated he was no older than thirty-eight. Oswin was interested in how long Jaques had been a clown.

"You see," said Jacques, lighting a cigarette. "Most clowns are disgusting perverts, but that doesn't mean we go out of our way to date perverts. If I wanted that, I'd date a clown. At the end of the day, we want a sense of normalcy."

Jacques was an alumnus of Philippe Gaulier's clown school. The infamous school proudly boasted a sixty percent dropout rate. Oswin, never one to feel the need to one-up another, did not share that he was a West Pointer. Taking Jacques at face value, the training at clown school seemed rigorous and traumatic, but it produced the best clowns in the world.

“You’re a very handsome man, sorry, is that too forward?” asked Jacques.

“Not at all,” Oswin smiled.

Jacques was incredibly open about sharing his feelings and experiences with Oswin. Whether it was due to wearing layers of makeup or being French Canadian, Oswin could not say, but the clown loved to talk.

"I just thought you should know," said Jacques before pausing. He stared solemnly at the wall for a minute before continuing. "I am a recovering addict. It's only fair that I tell you now because I don't want to lie to you."

Jaques pulled up his sleeve to reveal heroin scars covering his arms.

"I really do think this is the last time…but France is the best place to score heroin!"

He laughed and laughed and honked his red nose.

It turned out that Jacques could not hold his liquor, forcing Oswin to carry him from place to place. Sauced or not, Jacques came willingly to the warehouse where Oswin promised to provide him with the best heroin in the world.

Oswin sat Jacques down in a chair, tied the tourniquet around the clown's arm, and assisted in inserting the needle. Jacques lost consciousness.

Part Two

The faint but consistent sound of dripping water somewhere in the distance brought Jacques back to the realm of the awake. The clown couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so groggy. One thing was for sure, that wasn't heroin that had been pumped into his veins.

It was so dark wherever he was. Despite visibility being tough going for himself, he could feel eyes on the back of his neck. Tired of knowing he wasn’t alone but nobody stepping forward to reveal themselves, he shouted:

“Hellooooooo.”

There was no response.

"Hello! Show yourselves, damn you."

He stumbled backward and crashed into someone. He turned around to see a mime standing in his way. Jacques's initial reaction was to be angry. He wanted to take out his frustration on the first person he saw and hold them accountable, but the mime was just as scared as he was. Not only that, the mime was crouched down with his arms held wide open in the air, clearly protecting his mime children.

“What is this place?” asked Jacques.

The mime put his hands up in the I don’t know gesture.

Jaques eventually regained some ability to see. He ran into three more mimes. Of the four, two were there protecting their families. The surroundings stretched infinitely. He guessed he'd walked a good hundred meters and still hadn't come any closer to reaching any barriers. Emmanuel, one of the mimes, kept hitting barriers everywhere he turned and started to panic.

“Why clowns?” asked Simmons.

“Who knows,” said Parker. “Oswin says we need clowns, so we get clowns. He brings in more income than any seven men combined, so I guess it doesn’t really matter.”

The two watched from their vantage point on the third floor, invisible to the clowns below them. At that point, Parker had been working with Oswin for two years, and nothing the mad genius did surprised him anymore. Oswin insisted the test subjects for his experimental weapons be clowns, and because it didn't add any costs to the budget, why not indulge the man?

Oswin was working on a new type of hand grenade. How it differed from traditional hand grenades, Parker could not say, but Oswin insisted it would be a game changer. Oswin never watched the tests with the rest of the team. He had his own secluded booth. Parker guessed the man didn't want anyone to see his face if the tests resulted in failure. One problem is that because Oswin never said what results he was looking for, sometimes other team members would start cheering prematurely, only to find out later that they had greatly upset their team leader.

“Testing will commence in ninety seconds,” came the overhead announcement.

Parker and Simmons watched with great anticipation. Parker could feel his palms getting sweaty as the countdown started at ten seconds. On the count of one, a spherical grenade roughly the size of a softball was lobbed at the group of clowns. The two-second delay seemed interminably long. When it exploded, the results were…interesting.

Oswin walked to the ground floor to examine the test results. Studio lights were not just bright but overbearing (and hot). Oswin had adjusted to dark observations. Jacques, the clown nearest the explosion, had been turned into a pile of ash. Fascinating, but not the outcome Oswin had hoped for. The mimes all suffered various degrees of being blown apart, nothing all that dissimilar from ordinary explosions via bombs. After all these years, Oswin still couldn't uncover the mystery of how that one clown was turned into a skeleton. Three years of research and eighty-seven dead clowns with nothing to show for it.

Oswin took a trip to the island of Elba, where almost two hundred years earlier, Napoleon had been exiled and condemned to live out the remainder of his life. While walking along the shoreline, Oswin decided that if he couldn't crack the code to skeleton grenades there, then he would sentence himself to the same fate as the emperor. But unlike Napoleon, who eventually escaped the island, Oswin was resigned to submit to fate if he failed.

He decided to take a stroll up Mount Cappane, the highest point on the island. There were cable cars going up and down, but the weather was decent, and it was a pleasant enough walk. Never one to meditate, he would sit still regardless at the top and search for the answer to the mystery that had been plaguing him since he was a little boy.

Part Three

Four child soldiers, no older than ten, guarded the club, but only a fool would sneer at them. Two guarded the outside doors, while two more were stationed inside. These four had all been abducted before reaching the age of six from different villages in Uganda.

The club was located off the beaten path, far from the prospering music scene in the Democratic Republic of Congo's capital, Kinshasa**.** Even if people never said it out loud, everyone who passed the club knew who had set up shop inside.

The L.R.A. leader’s top lieutenants waited eagerly outside the closed door. Their leader had locked himself away seven hours prior. They knew once he emerged, he would be emerging with another prophecy.

The prophet leader of the L.R.A., Mr. Kony, made an explosive entrance into Ugandan affairs in 1987 to do battle with President Yoweri Museveni. Kony wasn't just a rebel leader and a prophet but a spiritual medium. A rotation of more than a dozen multinational spirits would talk to and through him. Among these spirits was even a Chinese phantom. With God and spirits of different races on his side, he led a rebel force that succeeded in recruiting 60,000 child soldiers to his cause. He made it a point to visit each child recruit personally so he could look them in the eye and say, "A cross on your chest, young one, drawn in oil, will make you immune to bullets."

First and foremost, Kony consistently reiterated that the L.R.A. was fighting for the Ten Commandments. His Lieutenants eagerly awaited as they believed once he came out that door, he would reveal to them the long-awaited eleventh commandment.

Daudi Opiyo, himself recruited as a child, quickly rose through the ranks. At only twenty-two years of age, he had successfully led a campaign in Sudan, razing seven villages to the ground and bringing back thirty child slaves for Kony and his entourage. He grew irate when he heard a commotion at the entrance to the club.

One of the child soldiers ran up to Opiyo. Opiyo slapped the boy in the face.

“What the hell are you doing abandoning your post?”

"My apologies, Lieutenant sir! But this is important; there is a man outside who demands to speak to the prophet."

“I do not give a damn,” said Opiyo. “Tell him to go away.”

“But sir…it’s the President.”

“What is Barack Obama doing here?”

“No sir, the other president.”

No sooner had the words left the boy’s mouth when two other child guards walked in, accompanying none other than President Yoweri Museveni, wearing his trademark wide-brimmed hat. If Opiyo hadn't been stunned into silence, he would have been able to admire the foolhardy courage of the president to show his face here.

“I demand an audience with Mr. Kony,” said the president.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t blow your brains out here and now?” asked Opiyo.

“What I have to say is the utmost importance. Mr. Kony will want to hear what I have to say.”

“The prophet is indisposed at the moment. He is not to be disturbed.”

“This cannot wait,” said the president.

The children were getting nervous. They had never seen someone so imprudently making demands of their leader before. Opiyo's fingers were itching for a trigger. It's impossible to say what would have happened as the doors flung open at that moment and Kony emerged.

“God has spoken to me in Chinese and he sa—” but seeing the president before him stopped him in his tracks.

“Mr. Kony,” said the president, giving a tip of his hat.

“I should have you killed right now,” said Kony.

The president drew attention to his chest. He unbuttoned his shirt. Plain enough for all the child soldiers to see was a cross drawn in oil. Bullets would have no effect on him.

Kony and his entourage led the president to a makeshift conference room. While it may have looked like the president was a captive being put on display for all the gawk at and threaten, the man came willingly. He was surrounded by ten of Kony’s top brass, fifteen of the warlord prophet’s close friends, and forty child soldiers.

"Okay, we will let you speak, Mr. President," said Kony.

The president never broke eye contact with Kony. He removed his suit jacket in a calm manner, folded it nicely, and put it on the table next to him. Then he removed his shirt completely, baring his chest to the audience so all could see the oiled cross. Then, he did something unexpected. He rubbed the cross off his chest but said rubbing didn't just remove the mark of Jesus but also the color of his flesh. Where once had been black skin was now a spot of bright yellow.

Next, the president removed his glasses and set them on the table next to his discarded clothing. The president took a white cloth and started rubbing it on his face. His black skin began to vanish. He rubbed it on his chest, face, and neck, erasing the man he used to be and all in attendance thought he was. The transformation was complete. Underneath the person Kony and his forces thought was President Yoweri Museveni was a clown. The clown was wearing a bright yellow jumpsuit. It had a pale white face with a shocked, painted red expression. Removing the bald cap showed an afro of unruly green hair.

A million arms raised a million guns and pointed them at the clown.

"As you have guessed, I am not President Yoweri Museveni,” said the clown. “I am here to tell you my story, and you will listen.”

to be contd.....

If you enjoyed that, you can find more works of fiction on my Substack page (link in the profile).

Still very much interested in technical feedback on my writing. I have done a lot of it but my English language schooling wasn't the greatest, and I have kind of had to figure out a lot of the rules for myself over time.

But also, is this useful information? is it accessible enough? how could I make it better? Would you like more examples of stories that use the concept well?

Would also welcome any topic suggestions? Obviously want to focus on things relevant to a wider audience of authors, especially genre authors. My technical background is in the biosciences, so related topics are straightforward for me to write quickly, but I have plenty of experience researching diverse topics.

Example article below (1,673 words)

.......

OK, we’ve just looked at the medical implications of ordinary, everyday, gunfire

But now you want to have monsters spitting super acids, mysterious alien diseases, and exotic nanotechnological poisons.

Because you’ve read my previous articles you don’t want to resolve this by having one of your characters mix up a super DNA reversion serum, using only the contents of their rucksack, the rare Acturian sunflower (that can only be found in the fire swamp), and the enduring power of friendship. I’m pretty sure that this was the plot of roughly half the cartoons ever produced in the 80’s.

So what can a medical professional actually do in the face of seriously weird shit? And what are the odds that it will work?

Can’t touch this…

The blurred lines of incompatibility between different biological lineages is absolutely something that could be exploited by a canny medic. Anything that hurts that pathogen that can’t touch the patient is your friend. I talk elsewhere in this blog about how the basic permutations of the standard carbon chemistry toolkit is likely to be somewhat reshuffled in an alien biosphere. If cyanide is a common blood component in the alien chicken your Captain ate, you might have a problem, but if aspirin is lethal to the parasite that’s trying to eat your science officer, you might at least be able to scrape out a draw.

Try everything, ideally in the Petri dish first, but in extremis you could do worse than simply dosing the patient up with anything that you can think of that won’t actually kill them, and roll those dice. This is generally frowned on within modern medicine even if you are the President, but that’s cause someone else already did most of that science, and we’re on frontier rules now buddy.

Start with the most basic organic chemistry play-list and work out from there, ethanol is a great shout, none for the Physician though…

Technological terrors and nanotechnology - try the biggest magnet you can find.

Basic biology - try the biggest magnet you can find, why the heck not? lots of reasons it could work. A human being can almost certainly tank more Gauss than you got. Check for implants first though…

Not sure whether the bugs have similar resistance to sound/radiation/light? time to find out? Every frequency, every flavor. They have a super sense? figure out how it works and overload that shit, make them look like idiots in the prequels. Heat the patient up as much as they can take, then cool them down.

Does it need something in the environment to survive that we don’t? find out and get rid of that shit. They breath Nitrogen? You’re going to feel pretty damn silly if it takes you until after the xeno-massacre to realise that all you needed to do was change the air mix.

Oxygen? That stuff is a great fuel source but, at least in chemistry terms, horrifyingly nasty. A good chunk of terrestrial evolution was devoted to figuring out how to manage the logistics. If it comes from an anaerobic background it almost certainly going to have a BAD time at a human party, so crank the 02 percentage up and increase the pressure. Try not to blow yourself up.

Faraday cage, lead box… just because you don’t know about it, doesn’t mean you can’t stop it.

Sure, Mr Crusher might randomly stumble on their secret weakness in the third act, but why not play it safe and systemise this stuff?

Now, in practice this approach to medicine might lack what might delicately be termed narrative elegance. but you control how this unfolds, and there are plenty of ways to play this without making your characters appear too desperate or lucky.

The advantage of this kind of approach is that it is well within the reach of the sort of smart person that can plausibly exist in many scenarios. You aren’t going to have to explain why a Nobel laureate in genetic medicine and all of her research equipment is trapped in the deserted hospital with Tom Cruise, his ex-wife, and her doomed new husband if it turns out that Vodka cures the Space Zombie bites. Thanks to the general promiscuity of Alcohol Dehydrogenase (the enzyme that metabolises alcohol), a surprising number of real life medical emergencies can absolutely be treated by getting the patient hammered.

Slash and burn

The patient didn’t need that leg anyway.

Limbs can be cut off, surrounding tissue can be excised, and wounds can be cauterized. Most doctors will be reluctant to resort to this kind of treatment immediately so they need to be made aware of the necessity.

The likelihood of success is going to depend on exactly what is afflicting the character and the speed with which treatment is provided, most likely every second is going to count.

In the event of a battlefield amputation, the next challenge is going to be preventing the character from bleeding to death. This can involve cauterizing tissue and tying off arteries physically (which will be messy). The medic’s chance of pulling this off without killing the patient is obviously going to be much increased if they have experience of trauma surgery, from the military especially, as battlefield surgery gives lots of chances to practice amputation.

Life support

This is involves follows the same basic theory as CPR. You keep the blood flowing and the lungs moving until the patient recovers or you get better help. If you have access to a reasonably modern medical facility this can be done for a substantial amount of time.

This will work in scenarios in which you expect whatever is affecting your character to wear off in time, without doing much additional damage to their tissues in the meantime.

Many nerve poisons can be treated in this way as well as anything else that can cause temporary paralysis (which often prevents breathing).

If you want your patient to live you will need to get them to a substantial medical setup very quickly indeed or have a fairly slow onset of symptoms. In sci-fi, a small first-aid device that can sustain a patient by directly stimulating heart and chest muscles isn’t pushing credibility much.

Opposite day

This involves doing the exact opposite of whatever is occurring in the patient.

For example, if the poison is slowing the patient’s heart rate, you give them a drug to speed it up or block the sites within their body that would typically increase heart rate. If the patient’s temperature is rising you might try to cool them down physically.

This is often far from ideal for the patient, but much less so than dying.

Doctors doing this need to be particularly careful to monitor the patient to make sure that whatever they are doing to the patient diminishes at the same rate as whatever they are treating. but failure to do this is an extremely plausible mistake for a rookie medic to make.

Put them to sleep

This could be done to prevent the patient from something that is attacking their central nervous system, or otherwise afflicting their thought processes. For example, inducing a coma is integral to some experimental treatments for rabies.

There are obviously a lot of common science fiction scenarios that could be addressed in this way, including quite a few that are unlikely to crop up in med school.

It should be noted that rendering a patient safely unconscious, especially for an extended period of time is not a trivial challenge for modern medicine, especially outside of a medical facility and without a trained anaesthetist. Percussive anaesthesia is not going to go uncommented on in the post-Archer world.

Ready with the hay-fever tablets

For reasons discussed in a different article, it’s probably more realistic for a patient to have a serious allergic reaction to an alien venom than they are to actually be poisoned by it.

Inflammatory responses are very rapid in onset and dramatic, while still being readily reversible, which gives them a lot of narrative potential.

Recognising this and responding appropriately with anti-inflammatory drugs is well within the ability of a modern medic, and the drugs that will be available to him.

Anti-inflammatory medication also has the plot advantage of being available to the general public, anti-histamine tablets are probably going to be far too slow, but an EpiPen could easily save a life.

Putting the patient on ice

If you can’t treat someone right this minute you can try storing them until you can. This is not really plausible with modern medical technology, but could easily be a mainstay of science fiction medicine.

Technological advances that might lead to this might involve drugs that could be used on the patient preventing their tissue from being damaged by ice crystals forming as they freeze, such natural anti-freeze does already exist in nature. Future space colonists might even have been genetically engineered to already express them within their body.

This type of intervention also requires a way of cooling the patient throughout their entire body very quickly.

Higher tech settings might bring stasis technology to the table that can literally pause time.

Local remedies

OK, we’re back to the Acturian Sunflower here… sort of…

Whilst it’s not plausible to cure the patient of alien disease just by grinding up a flower and doing twenty minutes of prize winning medicine, the local life is actually an excellent place to start looking at if longer term research is involved.

A better scenario to consider here, is our own discovery of penicillin, if you want alien antibiotics then alien moulds and other microorganisms are a promising lead. Observing an ecosystem can bring insight into important relationships and interactions. If you want to treat alien snake analogue venom, the biology of whatever is in the local mongoose niche is a good place to start.

In fact, next up in our medical trope series, we are going to take an even more in depth look at the likely differences between terrestrial biology and the more alien stuff.

Genre: Horror/Fantasy.

Word Count: 3651.

Honest feedback is greatly appreciated.

Heart pounding I quickly slide behind the industrial dumpster, pinning myself against the wall. I take  fast stabilizing breaths and rummage through the refuse left on the ground, pulling the larger garbage nearer. Arranging two large trash bags, one shattered television, and 3 seat cushions around me blocking the open area between the dumpster and wall on either side. The makeshift parapet would block sight lines of anyone investigating down the alley. I hoped it meant no thing could find me either.

Breathing caused rasping flights of pain in my throat and chest. Quieting my breathing proved a difficulty while trying to catch it. A mixture of fear bound paralysis and fleeing had brought me this far: adrenalized, stuck behind a dumpster, with my mind ballooning far from reality and rapidly retreating into itself. A mind furnished, currently, with delusions, ego, and hope. The hope was unwarranted and a child of the ego and delusions. A product of an overwhelmed brain breaking down when pushed beyond the limits of what it was created to interpret.

I had to find some purchase in the present but I couldn’t. I was too scared, too isolated, and too alone to have any interest in reality. I’m compelled to protect my sanity throughout my death throes. Death throes I felt smack in the middle of; a slow fox on a trappers land. My body saved me initially, acting when my mind wouldn’t; responding when the thing found me. I won’t stand a chance unless I had the mental wherewithal to make even slightly reasonable decisions.

The thing. I thought. That stalking darkness, unrelenting and inevitable. It would kill me and the world would think I did it. Maybe I shouldn’t give it the satisfaction. I could take into my own hands what running would just delay. A sick and frighteningly pleasurable reaction to that thought welled from within. I eyed the broken glass, jagged and lethal, sitting beside me like a snake waiting to strike.

A smell crashed through me like a tidal wave on Olfactory beach. A putrid, horrible smell. One I imagine you could only experience during the 10th month of living in the corpse of a giant. A smell that probably saved my life. The culprit was an unrecognizable, greenish brown slush that looked like a Vegas resort for maggots and flies. I, for a brief moment, wondered what the entertainment would be like. A thought that jarred the erratic, cornered thinking loose allowing room for others thoughts and so a levy broke.

The other thoughts came in force, my mind pinballing between them. I felt like a man regaining sight only to be hit with blistering light**.** I’d lost some agency over myself and it would take minutes of steady breathing to return to homeostasis. I counted each measured breath keeping my mind solely focused on my lungs expanding and contracting, counting one two three with three sharp inhales followed by one two with two long exhales, then repeating the sequence over and over until the world resolved into something more understandable.

The thing. This monster. My monster. Born of pain and fear. A loathsome, mercurial creature that invaded and with it came despair. A serial traitor of mind and body that inhabits the same, peddling in wares of anguish.

One year ago marked the abrupt end of a slow and frustrating battle with severe bouts of melancholy and an overly anxious disposition. A nearly random and mostly neutered attempt to right what I thought of as a sinking ship led to a questionable doctor providing me off the record advice,  suggesting a holistic “doctor” and friend that he swore by and referred to as shamanic. I do not prescribe to pseudo-scientific approaches, so, I declined the offer. At first. The thing was, this friend of his was literally right next door. I mean to say that they actually shared a break room in a six story office building. I was admittedly curious and I was diabolically reassured that my insurance would be taken. The whole thing was obviously an insurance based honeypot, but my curiosity won the day.

This was a charlatan shrouded in the visage of a doctor, I was sure of that. Enough doctor for insurance companies but that’s where it ended. His office looked as if science had gone to war with astrology. Ranks were filled with crystals, tarot cards, vials of herbs, Reiki charts, and other mystic sundries. This army was counterpointed by Diagnostic Manuals, displayed diplomas, and sterile tools. Lighting the Paolo Santo as he did when I entered could have been the starting pistol for war. A large man with a bowling ball head and bright red cheeks. He’d stolen Winston Churchill's body and his head was resting upon it, he must have forgotten the neck. A healthy, successful conman. I saw two suits on the man, one of wool, and one of bygone charm. I listened to him pitch each expensive option for treatment. He went as far as to invite me upstate for a Chakra workshop weekend, fully covered by insurance mind you. I turned him down each time, except the last. His final offer was his business card and a small bag of Egyptian Mummy dust that he explained each first time patient received. Courtesy of china, I was sure. I was wrong.

Later that evening, I looked up mummy dust as medicine, or really: snake oil. I found out that medieval Europeans thought grinding Mummies to dust and ingesting would cure all sorts of ailments. I looked down at the tea in front of me and then the bag. So many tries, so many failures. So many lost days. I had slept through my 20s, more or less, and had snoozed the alarm into my 30s. The thoughts numbing more than anything, I shuffled them away and decided to drink a mummy. The bag had a curious symbol on it, like two hands and arms pushed together forming a goalpost with a Bobby Pin shape hovering in the center. I cut the bag, dashed some Mummy in my tea, and drank. 

I felt a sensation of calmness originating from the crown of my head radiating through me downward. The sensation didn’t let up, I felt a peacefulness inside, the wholeness that always felt just out reach had been given to me. All of the awfulness had been scooped out of me and only wellness remained

The mirror mounted to the wall in front of me betrayed a shadow darting over the floor under the couch. I snapped my head trying to identify the origin. There was nothing.

Couches don’t typically moan, so that caught my attention. Underneath the coach, I could see only shadow. The shadow was boiling, black pustule-like bubbles popping and forming. The dark was bubbling upwards and the coach began to move upwards with it.

What the fuck?

A hulking mass of dripping black shadow rose 6 feet into the air rolling the coach off it in the process. Undulating, nearly liquid and without real form the goo began. creeping closer, until it was only a foot or two away.

I was terrified, but pragmatically so. Whatever happened had given me calm when it was appropriate, but now when more complex emotions were needed, their space was fully allowed, albeit moderated by a new overall serenity.

The shadow goo began to boil over growing taller, rapidly coalescing into a headless, moth-like shape with wings above and around me cocooning me in them. I felt like a newborn in a horrible womb on his return trip to The Maker.  The face was still bubbling. I couldn’t escape, I would either die here or wake up tomorrow and figure out what that quack gave me.

The vacancy where a head would be was an eternity. Sickly black and undulating, folding into itself mesmerizing me. I watched as the darkness began to well inside the non head pushing itself deeper inside its awful body. The top of the body pulsed and began to cover the hole. Just before the well of living goo had been dammed up by the creatures outer shell the top of a head began to push outward expanding the body in a parturitive display. The eyes. I could not look into those eyes. I knew, I knew those eyes meant death, no destruction. My destruction, utter, total, and insignificant. I closed my eyes hard.I grabbed my ears, then extended my elbows beating them into the wings trying to find freedom. Each touch burned with darkness. Corrosive shadows. 

Recoiling in pain and gathering my composure, rather quick I might add, I saw it. It was wearing my face sneering back at me but the eye sockets were empty.. My face was the grey of an old, worn photo, and the surface was pulsating in rhythm with the current of the dark river of goo. Now it was towering over me, wings imprisoning, using my own disfigured face. The mass redistributed some of its goo, stretching my neck on its body the three feet of distance between us.  We were nose to nose and my neck was a children’s bendy straw that someone had tied a knot in. The empty eye sockets were portals into a world of writhing darkness, of an apathy so strong it had risen, formed and was now in kissing distance. A thought left as quick as it entered. I could hear the bubbling up close now. If you ever put your ear to a bowl full of water and yeast interactering, you have a pretty good idea of what this sounded like.

I trembled, palpable fear streaked with malice lashed around me, a storm of frozen death, of interminable despair. I was making peace with death in my mind the majority of it, while still being fairly certain I had been drugged by some powerful hallucinogen. The moments passed and nothing really happened. The creature slowly withdrew its wings fully inside of itself, until just the thorax, abdomen, and face remained. The shadows boiled again and shifted into a mass of centipede-like legs, and the being backpedaled, while staring, merging into the darkness on the wall. I was left alone.

The next morning, the calm still resided inside exactly as it had since drinking the Mummy . I hadn’t gotten out of bed, and decided to just call the ‘Doctor’ first thing. It ran enough times to outlast my patience. Rinse and repeat a few times and I was ready to try something else. I called the actual, albeit shady, doctor I went to. They picked up quickly and the reception informed me that my quack doc hadn’t been in today. I’d expected that and planned to go visit the office in person.

I was running through the events of last night and had just finished using the toilet when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I really, really wasn’t ready for more surprises today.

My face wasn’t mine. I had no idea whose face I had, but I know my face well enough to know this wasn't it. It was older than mine, with well worn in laugh lines; broad and rough cheeks dotted with sunspots. Tightly cropped white and brown hair fell an inch down my forehead. Salt and pepper hair, if you’d mostly run out of pepper.

What the hell did I take.

Avoiding mirrors, I forced myself to not focus on anything but simple next steps. Steps that lead to the doctors office, which he was not at, and finally an urgent care. According to the urgent care: I hadn’t been drugged, and the black burns were closer to hyperpigmentation than burns. I doubted the second part. Putting myself in a position to wait would, before, have proven a categorically bad idea. I would have been overwhelmed by the trials of the past night and would begin to withdraw within myself, disallowing me from futureward progress for some time, a usually inevitable pitfall. However, today wasn’t that. I felt clear, present, rational, and decisive and most important I continued to consistently feel this.

I had abandoned my old life completely, but like creatures of the night it came back for meI had moved 3 states over and surprisingly, my life took an upswing. I felt so much more well prepared to meet life every day. I had found what I had always wanted, and it didn’t matter what caused that. This wellness was mine, if I was me. Every mirror would temporarily destroy the delusions I was living, seeing a face I couldn’t and refused to recognize. I would stare at that face for hours, hoping to never see mine again, fearing that my real face would return.. Oddly, eventually it did return; slowly, over the course of this past year.

During this year my old life became a bounty hunter out to get me. I was dodging stray neighbors at grocery stores, avoiding old coworkers who’s jobs somehow began overlapping with mine, and generally avoiding the risen hands of the past, not wanting to be dragged back to that hell. Peculiarly, my face began to change too. The first time I ran into a familiar face, a high school buddy who’s work had relocated him here without much reason. That’s when I noticed my mask start to crack. Reality, or delusion maybe, began fraying at the seams; rarely, but certainly I would see my face again. I chose this life over my old one, not even my face, my real face, was enough for me to go.

So I ran again, but the past always caught me. Off guard at gas pumps, or in bathrooms at movie theaters. I wasn’t fast enough to outpace whatever was happening, and everytime I intertwined with my old life my mask would break more and more, until, one morning, it was gone. It was only me in the mirror, but the wellness had stayed, to my surprise.

I started seeing the shadows again a few days after that. I saw them running down the walls like spiders. 

At night, large boils of darkness would grow from the ceiling dripping their goo over me while I slept. Shadows would dart around when they shouldn’t. My paranoia spiked and I went to ground, holed up in my apartment with enough lighting for a stadium.

I would burn the darkness away just as it had burned me.

The prospects of isolation and sleep deprivation stoked enough concern for me to start working on a plan to avoid dealing with them. I planned to stay 2 months, while completely turning myself off from the world. I wouldn’t look at a mirror until the last day, I hoped disconnection would reverse this transformation and whatever barrier was crossed or broken with it. I had just enough time to come up with the plan before the plan was on its ass covered in Vaseline sliding down the hallway and out of the door.

A darkness had begun to creep in through the door, and from the areas where the floor meets the walls. It was not on the ceiling, the benefits of living on the top floor, I guess. Small, hand-like tendrils sprouted around the baseboard as if they were lethal mold. Hungry mold.. They actually grew teeth, thousands of tiny tendrils, grew tiny cartoon teeth and started chomping at the air. They began to grow, every tendril, after every bite, would get bigger and closer. They were eating the light, consuming and becoming the space it was occupying. Each bite would leave behind a grey color to everything occupying, while any object bitten wouldn’t be damaged, only the light consumed and the object left in greyscale.

No, no, no! This can’t be happening. The light should work, it should overcome the darkness.

I was frozen stock still, horrified, watching this impossibility unfold before my eyes. Light, champion and destroyer of shadow was being overwhelmed.

The location of the lights left me standing in the brightest portion of the room, the center. The tendrils slithered up the wall, making their way to the ceiling about the light. The shadow above started to droop, then became a basketball sized droplet about to fall from the ceiling. It didn’t fall, the drop of darkness remained as it was, hardly attached to the ceiling, it began to spin. The droplet spun so quickly the shadow was sloughed off bit by bit sculpting a face.

My face slowly stopped spinning while still hanging from the ceiling. I couldn’t have stopped watching if I had known, I was so transfixed, completely frozen.

The eye sockets were not empty now. My eyes were staring back, startlingly white against the blackness. When we had met eyes before I had seen me, but it hadn’t. I watched the moment of recognition in my light green eyes.. I saw all of the goo from the walls, ceiling, and floor, in an instant, snap to my shadow head forming a body. I observed the goo tense up and propel itself straight down with full force into the light. That was the last thing I saw.

I braced myself for an impact and dove to the side, slamming hard onto my left shoulder sliding a few feet. Darkness hit like a foul order. There was no impact. I tried to get to my feet but stumbled forward into my computer desk, crashing my hands into the monitor trying to catch myself. I grabbed for the hand lamp that I’d left on the desk and upon finding it was met with its bed of broken glass. I felt the glass tear into the top of my hand and fingers, but couldn’t slow down. I turned the lamp on, aimed towards the door and barreled ahead. I felt the immense pressure of the darkness crushing the light, eating away at it. I saw the goo building itself, forming between me and the shrinking light. I braced my unhurt shoulder and barreled through the goo. It ate the rest of my light while I pressed forward expecting resistance. There wasn’t any. My momentum crashed me right into the closed door, hard; searing pain lit in my already injured shoulder. I punched the doorknob, then grabbed it, swung the door and fled.

Now I’m underneath a dumpster, too exhausted to run, a denizen of darkness, awaiting sunrise to buy time, and the only light I have is the one currently shining from my phone. Looking down I realize my hand that held the lamp sustained damage when the light was fully eaten, the entire hand down to a blotchy divider just below the wrist was grey. It responded without issue to use and there didn’t seem to be anything else wrong with it. I stared at the shore of grey against an ocean of color for several minutes confirming the greyness wasn’t expanding. The sun had begun to peak over the horizon. Day was breaking.

Day was breaking. Just a couple more minutes, I just need to hang on.

The dumpster exploded away from me into the wall of the alley as goo burst up from underneath it. The creature flew into the air several feet before splattering back to the ground and beginning to reform. The feet, forming first, were wearing my shoes, then the legs came with my pants and the torso my shirt. Once again I was face to face with the shadow version of myself, staring into my own eyes.. Slowly pushing myself to my feet, I took the opportunity to check the horizon. The sun was more than half visible, the light had crept across the street outside of the alley and was minutes away from consuming the alley itself, hopefully along with the creature in it. I’d like to see it try and eat the sun.

I notice the creature's hand had color now, unlike mine.

Had it stolen the color from my hand or had it stolen my hand?

Twin tendrils lash out forming from the shadows beside me. They wrap around my arm like twin snakes constricting prey and begin to steal the color from me. The deathly grey ran down my arm like blood. I lift my phone with the prepared light and shine directly at the writhing mass. Immediately the tendrils let go and strike at the phone light. I dropped the phone as I shone it and the tendrils whipped where the light had just been, missing it entirely. Requiring a second strike to extinguish the light bought me the second I needed.

I dive away from the creature and towards the slow, inexorable wave of sunlight creeping through the alley, bathing all it could reach in light. I’m on all fours for a moment after diving, before pushing myself to my feet and lunging towards the sanctifying light. Salvation is feet away.

A puff of dust and the tinks of gravel being scattered followed by the dull thud of my body against the pavement. I see the tendril wrapped around my dull grey leg. I felt the hunger. I couldn’t reach the sun in time. I felt the rest of the creatures mass shoot toward me and heard the boiling as the face formed, inches from my own. I turned to face it and once again saw my eyes looking back at me. This time when I looked into those eyes I realized that this creature was, and has always been, me. 

The sun rises over a sleepless city as a man steps from an alley into the light. He checks his watch, then his pockets, and rolls his shoulder as if to shake off some rust. He whistles a happy thing and walks with the sun. 

A shadowy thing bleeds back into the dark, weary and lost. 

Genre: Psychological horror/ horror. Always happy to hear what you think 😁

Darkness enveloped everything. It shrouded the physical world and thoughts alike, leaving the other senses starving, yearning. The taste of iron in his mouth—blood? A sweet-foul smell, hanging in the icy air. The sound of rapid breaths bouncing against a surface above his face—not the traditional echo from a distant object, rather the sound bouncing back from a too-close surface, a sort of pre-echo. Were his eyes open at all? He reached a hand to his face, blinked, and felt his lashes brush against his open palm. They were open, albeit it seemed darker than when they were shut. He grimaced as he felt at his forehead, the skin was broken and a dormant headache reignited itself. He began probing around the void with his hands, like the tentacles of a deep-water squid, looking for food in the darkness of the ocean. He was on his back. Reaching up tentatively into the void, his knuckles rapped against a solid, smooth surface, a hand’s-breadth above his forehead. He found the same confining surface to his right, and to his left…someone else lay beside him, unmoving and silent as the darkness. He reached his arm over the person. The stranger’s head was bald, and they wore no clothing. Pressing a finger to their throat—in the awkward position that the confines demanded—he felt for a pulse, but the tell-tale throbbing of life was non-existent. The ironic hope he had felt at the prospect of having a companion in the box, was killed. It was himself, the darkness and the corpse. Reality settled down on him. He wished he were alone. Anything but sharing the space with this carcass. He screamed and thrashed in the suffocating enclosure. He pressed his palms and knees against the ceiling, pushing as hard as he could, it didn’t budge. A deep horror welled up from within his gut, like a thick oil, burbling into his chest. He was drowning! He began pounding the floor with taught fists. Punching the wall. The ceiling again. He bumped the corpse. Dear God! The walls, the walls were closing in. He was going to be crushed with the stranger. He already imagined the sensation of being mushed into the corpse, both of them becoming one mixture of bones and meat. He screamed, he howled, the terror defied normal speech. He was being pressed tighter against the lump of skin and clothes. Their hands brushed against each other. The corpse is alive! He lurched to sit upright, and received a polite reminder of the ceiling’s existence, in the form of a white shock, flashing through his skull.

You can read the rest of the short story for free on my Google drive link. It's about a 15 min read:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-EUh3X6kjAPI0HO26BfvX18P8XCgJotC/view?usp=drivesdk

Howdy!

I am an amateur writer and have been working on a new short story about a girl named Clare Nubody. I have attached the prologue below. My intent was to start the story in a similar way that Shakespeare does; that is, preemptively revealing the ending.

I would love to know what you think - any advice or feedback is greatly welcomed!

Thanks!

## Prologue: Weirdly Warm Sunsets

Clare Nubody hobbled toward the tall hill overlooking the Dagarian Sea. When she reached the foot of the hill, she collapsed from exhaustion.

But Clare Nubody refused to stop moving, to stop trying, to stop living. Lying prone on the ground, she called upon every muscle fiber to extend her left hand and clasp a fistful of earth. Pulling downward, she dragged her body up the hill and then repeated the motion with her right hand, then her left, inching upward. Slowly, methodically, she made her way to the top where she crawled toward a lone apple tree.

At the top of the hill, the apple tree swayed gently back and forth against the harsh ocean wind -- its roots bore themselves deeply into the hill. Plump red apples and deep green leaves lay scattered around it. Its trunk was remarkably thick and its canopy reached high into the sky. If one were not paying attention, one might mistake the apple tree for an old redwood born years ago.

With the last bit of energy she had, Clare clutched a notch in the tree and pulled herself up from the prone position. Now sitting, she leaned her body against it and gazed down the seawall toward the Dagarian Sea. The setting sun cast a brilliant painting of red and orange rays into the evening sky. Waves crashed against the golden yellow sand as seagulls danced carelessly and freely above, singing their songs of the sea.

Clare breathed deeply; the air was rich with sea salt and intermixed with the sweet smell of apples. For several moments, she was at peace. It was as if her entire existence had always been this one moment in time.

Clare clutched her ribcage as blood streamed down her side. By now the grass was soaked in it. She felt her eyelids getting heavy and her head lighter. Her vision blurred and with it, the sound of cawing seagulls and crashing waves became more and more like an orchestra of cellos and trumpets. Clare felt grateful. Grateful the universe had gifted her this moment -- grateful for the beauty of the setting sun. She managed a weak smile as the warmth of the sun slowly pulled away and the sun fell bellow the horizon.

When you are a fire, you cannot fall for the forest.

I know I caused him pain, like a wildfire spreading. But his failure to see me, not just the damage, but the person I was beneath it was a cold wind that cut deeper than any flame ever could. We used to wander the world together, exploring everything with wonder, and I could catch fire within the safety of our love. But once we stopped walking side by side, when the ultimatum was set without support for me, or a way out for me, it was as if the stars above us dimmed, and we drifted apart, two pieces of an incomplete puzzle. Searching for what was missing between us.

The more he tried to control me, grasping for what was slipping through his fingers, the more I lost myself in the shadows of addiction and self loathing. I became an ember, and after a while my fire went out completely. I couldn’t even walk alone. And in that moment, I realized we weren’t just two pieces of an incomplete puzzle trying to fit together anymore.

I was missing from the puzzle. The puzzle didn’t even have a picture of us on the front of the damn box anymore. It was a puzzle of 10,000 blank pieces and I was upside down on the floor.

But as I stepped away, I began to find myself again. Slowly, the fog lifted, and I saw how heavy I’d been held down. That the love I once felt had been transformed, I was being smothered. The constant need for control, the grip that never let me breathe, wasn’t love. It was a chain, disguised as care. Codependency isn’t love. It’s a prison. And I’d been trapped inside it, convinced that my worth came from holding on to the idea of a perfect life.

But in letting go, I realized that love doesn’t weigh you down. It lifts you up, it frees you, it lets you grow.

And that’s how I feel loving myself now. I feel free, with enough space around me to be the fire that spreads to clear the forest of what isn’t needed. I no longer need anyone to hold me down or define me. I’m learning to let my own light blaze, and in that fire, I’m finding everything I thought I had lost.

Fragments of You

I see you in the curves of the earth.

In the way blankets of snow bend and fold down the face of a mountain.

I see you in the ripples of water, colliding and embracing like old friends, before drifting back out to sea.

I see you in the rolls of clouds, like marshmallows, above us - and in the craggy rocks, sleek and glimmering, below.

So too, I see you in the avalanche that crushes the unexpectant victim.

And in the oceans that swallow all, consuming even light.

I see you in the wrath of a storm unfurling its might, light striking like a viper between the spray of bullets pummeling exposed earth below.

I feel you like the prostrate wonderer’s shock as bare skin splits against a rogue obsidian edge.

I feel the awe and terror that comes with each fragment of you.

How beautiful, the ember that burns.

How breath-taking, the fire that devastates.

How fragile, this heart that bleeds.

Chapter 1: The Last Walk

Marcus Reynolds was going to die in Monaco. The Mediterranean sun knew it. The ancient stones knew it. Only Reynolds remained ignorant of his fate as he emerged from the Casino de Monte-Carlo into the punishing heat of late afternoon.

The scotch buzzed pleasantly in his system—four glasses of thirty-year-old Macallan, savored while watching Ferrari's new driver push his limits on the practice circuit. Reynolds grinned, recalling the collective gasp from the terrace when the car had nearly kissed the barrier at the swimming pool complex. He yanked his tie loose, the silk slipping easily against his collar. Christ, it was hot out here.

Monaco during race week was chaos incarnate. He dodged a pair of McLaren mechanics wrestling a front wing through the narrow street. Tourists pressed against the barriers, phones raised high, hoping to catch Lewis Hamilton or Max Verstappen heading to their garages. The air reeked of race fuel and burning rubber—that intoxicating mix of money and speed.

A Mercedes engine roared to life near Rascasse, its howl ricocheting off the stone walls. Reynolds winced, his teeth on edge. That sound always did something to him—set his blood racing and his wallet itching. Maybe it was time to pull the trigger on that GT3 he’d been eyeing. Nothing quite like a Porsche to attract the right kind of attention.

He breathed it all in: the sights, the sounds, the smells. This was his element—money, power, speed wrapped in Mediterranean glamour. He checked his watch—a Patek Philippe that cost more than most people earned in a year.

“Seven hours until Dmitri’s party,” he muttered. Plenty of time to change, eat, maybe call that blonde he’d met at Qualifying last year. Did he still have her number?

As he made his way toward the port where his yacht waited, Reynolds couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched. He turned casually, scanning the crowd—a throng of tourists and team staffers milling about. Nothing unusual. He shrugged and chuckled to himself. Too much scotch, probably.

The killer moved like a shadow through the race-week chaos. His linen suit was as expensive as his target’s, allowing him to blend seamlessly into the crowd. Around him, Monaco's medieval streets funneled the masses into predictable patterns. Waves of humanity surged through passages barely wide enough for two to walk abreast. The perfect hunting ground.

Reynolds walked with the kind of arrogance that came from never facing consequences. Every step, every grin, every careless gesture—it was a reminder of why he had to die. The killer didn’t just follow him; he studied him, memorized him. This wasn’t just a job. It was a reckoning.

Reynolds turned down a quieter alley where centuries-old buildings leaned together like conspirators. Here, the roar of racing engines faded, replaced by the pulse of the real Monaco. Laundry fluttered overhead in the salt breeze. A grandmother shouted in rapid-fire French from a third-floor window.

The killer lingered in the crowd, adjusting his cufflinks, his gaze sharp and calculating. His cologne—a bespoke blend of cedar and bergamot—drifted faintly on the breeze, unnoticed by all but a curious glance from Reynolds. The American’s brow furrowed for half a second, his gaze sweeping the crowd again, but he dismissed the thought and kept walking. Perfect.

The smell of garlic hit Reynolds first—Paolo's wife must be making her famous pesto again. The tiny café had been feeding Monaco since before Reynolds was born. He’d discovered Paolo’s cart last race season, and now he wouldn’t eat anywhere else during practice days.

“Bonjour, Paolo,” Reynolds said, fumbling with his euros. His scotch-soaked fingers clumsily shuffled the foreign bills.

Paolo grunted his usual greeting, his hands already wrapping the sandwich in wax paper. The kind of man who’d seen everything Monaco could offer and remained unimpressed.

A pack of Ferrari fans surged past, their Rosso Corsa shirts a blur of movement. The killer moved with them, letting their enthusiasm mask his purpose. One brush against Reynolds' exposed forearm—nothing more than a fleeting moment of contact in the crowded street. The microneedle in his signet ring found flesh with surgical precision.

Reynolds absently rubbed his arm, probably thinking it was just another tourist’s watch scratching him in the throng. He had no idea he’d just been handed his death sentence.

The killer slipped away as smoothly as he had arrived, disappearing into the flow of tourists. Three minutes now. Maybe four. The toxin would work its way through Reynolds' system with ruthless efficiency.

Port Hercule spread before Reynolds, a forest of masts and gleaming superstructures catching the late sun. His steps were already slowing, though he probably blamed it on the heat. His hundred-foot Sunseeker sat moored at the far end, the crew busy preparing for tonight’s party. They’d be waiting a long time.

The first wave of dizziness hit him near the seawall. He reached out, gripping the ancient stone with trembling hands. His chest felt tight now, the heat from the stones burning against his palms. His knees wobbled, threatening to give way.

‘Christ... what the...’ The words barely escaped his lips. His breathing came in shallow, ragged gasps. Sweat slicked his brow, but the Mediterranean heat felt cold. His vision blurred, narrowing to a pinpoint. His pulse thundered erratically, then faded.

From the shadow of a medieval archway, the killer watched with clinical detachment. Around them, the port buzzed with pre-race energy. Beautiful women in sundresses laughed over champagne on nearby decks. No one noticed the wealthy American faltering. Monaco during race week—too busy chasing tomorrow’s glory to see today’s tragedy.

Reynolds collapsed. The first shouts of alarm cut through the harbor’s constant hum. A British couple rushed to help. A dock worker called for a doctor. Too late. Far too late.

The killer moved toward the Yacht Club’s private dock with deliberate steps. The Novurania Chase 31 waited, sleek and polished. The dock master barely glanced up as he passed. Just another wealthy guest heading out to his boat.

At the harbor mouth, he opened the throttles. Monaco receded, its fairy-tale spires softening in the gathering dusk. When the coast was nothing but twinkling lights, he slipped the signet ring from his finger. Such a small thing to carry so much death. The Mediterranean swallowed it without a ripple, adding one more secret to its ancient depths.

Behind him, emergency lights painted Port Hercule in strobing blues and reds. But Monaco was already moving on, its attention drawn back to the spectacle of speed and wealth. Reynolds would be just another footnote—a wealthy American whose heart couldn’t handle the excitement of race week.

The killer allowed himself a small smile as the night claimed the sea. Another name crossed off his list.

Everything had gone exactly as planned.

It always did.

I'm the traditionally published author of 3 YA novels, Everybody But Us, The Long Game, and Bury Me Upside Down. Readers suggest that I push the envelope from traditional YA literature. In a world of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, where exactly is the outer limit? I try to stay away from pure smut...but I still go fade to black or limited description. Curious what others think.

Hi everyone! My name is Eva im a radio producer and screenwriter.

I often find it hard to keep myself motivated to write by deadline and stop myself from rewriting a sentence over and over and frankly, I miss meeting and connecting to other writers here in Toronto. So, I was hoping to create a little writing group, with motivated and like-minded professionals living in Toronto. Where we maybe meet up once a week, give feedback on eachothers work, and keep eachother motivated and on track. Learn from eachother, be those second and third pair of eyes, grow as writers in the span of maybe a couple years/long term.

Please DM me if you are interested/have felt the same way (and must be living in the city.) I look forward to hearing from you.

Hi, I recently started writing a story, but I feel there is something wrong with it that I just can't pinpoint, i'm new to the writing world, I'm looking for constructive criticism, as I feel I will just make more mistakes if I keep writing without getting someone else's point of view. Thanks in advance!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nR0EonQH0mW1Ub1EECMfEKtuXmVF4MA0/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=103236038421468896853&rtpof=true&sd=true

We were sitting in the back of the diner in a red-battered booth. I was nursing my milkshake like she was 6 weeks old and pure. You had a burger and a beer; your boots glued to the white tile floors. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come to your party, but next time. I promise”, you said. The new year begins with ketchup on your face and a bomb crater hovering over mine. But here’s your father, growing larger with time—our chests on fire; burning the residue of forgiveness. I take my tip back from the waiter’s hands because happiness isn’t contagious and you’re a part of me.

(I'd love feedback & anyone's question or what they think of this short piece?? )

Don’t Judge a book by its cover

“Oh my god! Stella!

Why would you take me to the library for second time in a week? You know I hate books their covers make me want to vomit” My friend and I ( by I, I mean me, Susan but everyone calls me Priya, even though it does not relate to my government name whatsoever) have been going to the library for a awful lot of time, mainly because Stella is a huge book reader especially  for those romance books that includes violence and a desperate need for their partner.

“Can we get out of here, I don’t want to spend my summer vacation in a dusty old library, contaminated with spiders and cockroaches, plus these book covers are utterly disgusting why would anyone want to read that …”

Susan whined like an obnoxious girl trapped in the woods without any reception. Suddenly Stella took a sharp breath as if she saw an art piece worth a whole new currency or an famous actress or god or a celebrity, I wasn’t too sure, but whatever stella saw I knew something serious was happening.

“Stella are you okay? Remember deep breaths, take it slow” Stella’s pupils matched the size of an atom, allowing me to identify that something was seriously, extremely, highly  wrong. I set Stella lying on the floor when I began observing what happened to her, However I couldn’t even hear nor see Stella due to the huge crowd becoming  unbearable, suffocating us leading to Stella’s death.

“No! what is wrong with you people she is dead because of you noisy inconsiderate people can’t you see she is on the brink of unconsciousness because of you she is dead!” my voice began to dry up and a tear crawled out of my eye and slid down my ashen cheek.

Stella was sent to the ambulance 20 minutes later when I heard a masculine deep voice whisper inside my ear “it wasn’t the crowd ”

“excuse me” Susan stated in a high squeaky tone

“it was you who killed her” his soft brown curl swayed onto his face calling my fingers to shift it “it happened to be that the book of gods was in her hands, and when the book of gods feels offended he kills whoever touch’s him or his fellow people coincidently Stella was the only one touching a book at the time.” His rough silky voice drifted me into complete silence and tranquillity.

Boom! Crash!

The apocalypse! books swooping like mag pies protecting their babies and pens began stabbing people the calm tranquil setting converted into a setting of death and dystopia with fire set everywhere and the sky blood red, “what have I done” I was so lost in my thoughts, my guilt, my mistake, my inconsideration, I wanted to suicide on the fact that this was all my fault, I should have stayed silent, went along, didn’t have strong feelings. These books didn’t even do anything to me! What’s wrong with me!” the physical world was ending whilst the world in my mind was crumbling faster than the physical world ever could, who knew words held so much power?

“shhh…” the man whispered as he carried me to a safer space caressing my back for comfort “we will talk it out you never know if this is a plan sent from the gods of heaven” He planted a soft kiss on my tender lips “its going to be okay”

For a second I believed him his voice was so calm and reassuring I thought he was correct… “what are you doing” I said in a shaky frigid voice, he stalled for a second, he had his back facing me as if he was about to give me a gift or a surprise, my blood roared in my ears and my hands began to cramp to the grip I had on my dress, my heart was two seconds in to falling into my hands. he turned around and swallowed me in one big bite. It was satins plan.

When I found the body of the journal's owner I froze. I just came off of an exhausting day dealing with hyper-active students. The decay of their muscles and skin tightened and morphed their face into a grin haunting, like a monkeys, grotesque and completely inhuman. They were tightly grasping the journal, knuckles locked and fingers digging into the book as if it were a life ring drowning in a long forgotten sea. Their identity and gender were impossible to tell. The body is untouched, perfectly mummified by something far more final than death, being forgotten.  I saw several crows above as witnesses, their eyes fixed on the corpse but they also did not dare to eat the body of this person as it seemed like they saw something beyond human comprehension. I took their journal, its pages still wet describing an unwell specimen, grasping onto the past distorted the present and committed mental and physical anguish on themselves, tearing their mind and having them look for the other shore oh so tainted by the past. I do not mourn them, nor do I pity them. As I write this in their journal I must tell them this last thing.

The rain has stopped, you can rest now.

It's a question and an answer

I'm writing a series and the only way I can get over my writers block is to start writing the next book for it.

I'm still working on my first one, have the second one completed (still needs revising), the third one barely written, and an idea for the fourth

How else can I get over my writers block while staying focused on one craft?

On a cold, dark night in the deserts of Nevada. A single, dark shape with 2 yellow lights was flying down the empty road. Moving so fast; if not for the bright moon and stars shining down, you would think it's invisible.

“Are you sure you're not lost, Eric?”

“Babe. How many times do I have to tell you? I'm not lost; I just took a shortcut.” Said Eric while fiddling with the GPS. “The GPS is acting weird again. I think it's because your phone call connected through it.”

“That doesn't even make sense.” A gentle, female voice responded through the speakers. “You're going to make it home in time for—“

“Yes, yes. Our anniversary dinner.” Eric bluntly interrupted. “Don't worry, Vic. I'll restart this piece of crap GPS and be home in—

The call abruptly ended, and a loud metallic object, silver in color, whizzed past Eric at lightning speeds. Eric slammed on the brakes, his eyes wide and black from shock.

“What the hell?!!” He shouted in fear. With panic, he swerved left and right, unable to slow down in time before colliding directly with a large, red boulder. By some miracle, Eric survived. He opened the door, bruised and broken. His shiny blood runs down his face as smoke surrounds the engine.

“Vic, help me.” Eric muttered as he crawled away, dazed from the almost fatal accident. He collapses, his back touching the cold, hard dirt. His blurry gaze fixates on the beautiful moon.

The silver object returns, followed by what sounds like a hundred drums all banging in unison. Eric lifted his weak arms to cover his ears from the horrible noise. Suddenly a streak of bright light appears. Shining down on Eric, blinding him as if he stared directly into the Sun.

Eric whispers, “Please, help. I'm hurt.”

More silver objects appear with more lights. Eric, unable to stay awake from the pain, starts fainting in and out, in and out. The last thing he sees are two large, dark feet walking towards him. The sound of the drums is slowly replaced by yelling in a strange and foreign tongue. What he sees is too unbelievable to be true. But something tells him it's not his mind making things up or the desert playing tricks. It's reality.

“Aliens.” Eric says, before slowly slipping into unconsciousness.

After who knows how many hours, Eric finally woke up. His hands and feet were strapped to a cold, metal bed. A single light shone down on him. He blinked excessively, looking around the dark room, trying to understand what was happening and where he was. Everything looked so strange. Weird machinery and computers. Screens filled with odd text and images. At first, he thought he was inside of some kind of a hospital.

Until he saw them. Hairless and pale. Wearing long, white capes. Strange faces with piercing blue eyes and others with eyes as dark as coal. The aliens were walking around him holding strange tablets and discussing in the same foreign language he heard the night of the accident.

“Please, I don't understand what you're saying!” Eric pleaded loudly. “This has to be a mistake. I... I took the wrong shortcut accidentally. Please!”

They stick wires on him, cut him every which way. They penetrate his skin with needles and shine lights into his eyes and ears. A strange machine scans his body from head to toe, and in seconds Eric sees the inside of his body on one of the screens.

“This is a nightmare.” Eric thought to himself, “I will wake up any second now.”

He doesn’t know how long the tests lasted, but it felt like days. Like clockwork; lights on. Pain. Lights off. Lights on. Pain. Lights off. His body is covered in scars, old and new. He can barely move from the pain, barely keep his eyes open. Hunger, thirst, and fatigue are slowly chipping away at his life. He wanted to die; he begged them to kill him. But soon enough, the realization set in. There is no escape. The only joy left for him is the memory of Vic.

“Vic, Vic. Save me. Vic. I miss you. The words barely left Eric's mouth.

As the lights turn on once again, the memories of Vic fade away. More pain follows. He should be scared and angry. He wants to scream and fight, but he’s just too tired. So he lays there, without movement, without emotion. Eric knows what’s coming next.

The aliens start once again. One cut, then another. A needle stabs his thigh, then another in the arm.

“Where is it?” Eric asked, “Where is the pain?”

Something is different; something is wrong. He doesn’t feel anything. No pain, no hunger, no thirst. Is this his tired mind playing tricks on him? Like a lightning bolt from clear skies, it hits him. The fluid they injected him with the night before made him feel better.

“Was this an accident or another test?” Eric asked himself

He feels his strength coming back.

“It doesn’t matter. I have to take the chance; I have to risk it.” Eric says to himself, “I have to see Vic one more time.”

Eric patiently waits. He knows lights out means freedom, so he waits and waits. Motionless like the rocks in the desert.

– FLICK! –

“Finally.” Says Eric, already out of breath from adrenaline rushing through his tortured body.

Eric wriggles his bloody hand back and forth. It should hurt, but he doesn’t feel anything. He sees his skin slowly peeling as the tight, metal shackle cuts away. Then, by some miracle, the hand is free.

“YES! Oh, thank you God. YES!” Eric shouts as tears of joy flow down his face.

He quickly unlocks the other shackle. His cries turn to laughter. Then the shackles at his ankles, and a few seconds later he’s free!

His feet touch the cold floor, and Eric says, “Please don't let this be a dream. Please.”

Eric doesn’t have too much time to celebrate; he still needs to find a way out of this horrible place.

After a long breath, he whispers, “I’m coming to you, Vic.”

He bolts for the door, bumping into the machines and computers. The room is dark, very dark and cold. But Eric memorized the path the aliens take. Every tool they used, every cut and probe, every touch. He will not forget and will NOT forgive. The door opens with force, and his eyes quickly adjust to the light. He looks left and right. Not knowing which way is freedom. So he picks; he guesses.

“Right it is.” Eric says.

Eric runs down the hallway. Still can't feel any pain, but his muscles are still weak. He's slow. Turn after turn. Corner after corner. Breath after breath and no closer to freedom. All the running is making him slower and weaker.

“I need to find a way out of this maze of hallways, and I need to do it quickly.” Eric thinks to himself.

He turns another corner and is quickly stopped in his tracks. One of the aliens is standing there. This one looks different. He looks angry. Deadly. Before Eric can react, the alien lifts something that could only be a weapon and points it at Eric. The alien starts shouting, but Eric instinctively pounces like a cat and pushes the alien into the metal wall. Suddenly the whole area turns bright red, and the loudest siren Eric ever heard fills the halls. He panics and just starts running. Left and right again and through this door and another door. Hallway after hallway. It seems there is no escape from this red house of horrors.

“God, how do I leave?!” Eric shouts as he stops for a quick break. Out of breath and out of time.

The aliens' shouting and shuffling echo through the hallway, despite the sirens. Eric carefully peeks his head, hiding behind a box of garbage. His eyes scanned for the predators, his ears listening to their shouts and screams. The aliens are entering the facility through an open door and rushing down the opposite hallway. He can't believe what he's seeing.

“THE DESERT!” His eyes widen with joy, and the world's largest smile forms on his bruised face.

He runs. As if the south wind is pushing him on the back. The closer he gets to the door, the bigger the desert is in his eyes. Within seconds, he's outside. The cold desert feels warm compared to the torture room he was in. The dust enters his nose; the familiar desert smell. The moon's bright light shines a way to the perimeter fence. And past the fence? The boulder. The same boulder he crashed into before the beasts captured him. He needs to get to that boulder. It's life and death, literally.

With the south wind at his back once again, Eric makes his way across the desert towards the fence. Unable to slow down in time, he hits the fence face-first and climbs. Fingers and toes like small grappling hooks. Closer and closer to the top. A few more seconds, then freedom.

Unable to hold in his tears, he screams, “I'm coming, Vic! I'm coming home to y—What?”

Speechless and sitting on top of the fence. He looks down and touches his chest. Eric sees what nobody should: a bloody hand. He blinks a thousand times in one second. His brain trying to comprehend what his eyes are showing. Shiny blood. Flowing through a hole in the middle of his body. As if someone turned on the faucet of blood. Then another hole forms with more blood, and another right next to the heart that belongs to his loving Vic. Eric loses his grip and falls on the cold, hard dirt. He sees the deadly alien walking towards him, holding the deadly weapon. The infamous thought of death enters his head. Eric looks at the moon and accepts what will happen.

His last words: “Vic, my love. I'm sorry”.

The alien stands right next to Eric's green body and points the weapon. A loud bang, then silence. Darkness. Forever.

“Subject eliminated, sir.” The alien says, finger on his ear.

The alarm blaring out of the facility goes quiet. Silver helicopters and SUVs with lights as bright as the sun approach the bloody scene. Followed by scientists in white lab coats. The moon still shining on the fence, illuminating a white sign with the legendary words:

WARNING
AREA 51
NO TRESPASSING

I do not tell this story to frighten the reader, nor do I intend to mangle the image of my home-place. I merely seek to share the story that of which has been endowed to me by something of the supernatural. Perhaps this tale is no more than the ramblings and delusions of the insane, and of that I too am personally unsure of. But if my experience is true, then it is my duty to share with you what I have seen and heard. As I have stated before, of whether or not you believe this story to be true is left to the discernment of the reader. So with that agreement in mind, let me begin. It was a Saturday evening, a quarter ‘til eight if I remember correctly, and I was following my ordinary routine before settling down for the night. Then as I laid down in my bed, I heard a knock at my door. Unsure of who was knocking, I look through my window to see no one there. I threw on a coat and opened the door to find that my original analysis had been correct, there was no one on my front porch. It was not particularly unordinary for something like this to happen given that I live in a neighborhood where teenagers, and their jokes, are present. Although I was sure that this mysterious knocking could be explained away by commonplace teenage tomfoolery, something within me pulled me towards the forest to investigate. Typical of this time of year, the evening was dark and the heat of the day was slowly dwindling. I took my flashlight and pointed it towards the forest and what happened next I struggle to explain. Through the howling of the wind came a voice. No, a collection of voices, all of them saying almost in unison, “do you not know that I am troubled?”. I stand at the wood line too startled to move or speak, then it spoke again, “do you not know that I am troubled?”. I respond with a shaky voice, “I do not know you, nor do I know why you are troubled”. “You know who I am, and you know what troubles me” said the voice, then another voice whispered as if next to my ear “step across the wood line and I will show you”. Perhaps it was the terrible thought of what the punishment for disobeying a power strong enough to speak through the wind would be for a mortal such as I, or perhaps it was the work of unbridled curiosity, but nevertheless, I walked across the wood line flashlight in hand. The ground was soft from a blanket of dead leaves and a walking path had been formed that I had not seen before. I walked down the narrow path and approached an old oak tree. I had reached my hand out to touch the old oak, when a loud screech yelled out from its roots. I began to look around and did not see anyone or anything capable of making such a bloodcurdling scream. I took another step towards the old tree and then felt the ground shake from the vibrations of the screaming. “You cursed son of Adam, get away from me!” Exclaimed the voice. “I apologize if I am causing you pain” I replied to the unknown voice. After my reply the screaming ceased and the ground quieted to a soft rumble the way a man shivers when experiencing a sharp pain. A figure as of a shadow of a man approached me. As the figure drew closer the rumbling grew stronger and I heard the screams of what sounded like thousands of anguished souls surrounding me even louder than the screaming I had heard just prior. I covered my ears to block the sound, but it was to no avail, then I collapsed to the ground. “Who are you and why have you done this to me?!” I said to the shadow as he stood looking over me. “Adam’s son, I have not done this to you.” Said the shadow, “I have merely given you the ears to listen.”. Then I begged the figure to stop torturing me in this way saying, “I don’t understand what I’m listening to, please make it stop!”. The figure stood studying me for a second, then replied; “What you hear is the groaning of nature. Stand and walk with me, I will train you to focus.”. I managed to get to my feet and, while stumbling, followed the dark transparent spirit. Then I asked the spirit, “Who are you?” To which he replied, “I am of the Angelic guild that was designated to protect Eden after the rebellion of your first parents. Now, because the flaming sword has been taken out of our hands and given to our Lord and His body, we have been given a new task.”. “Is this ‘new task’ carrying off the souls of the damned?” I asked the being anxiously. “No” answered the spirit, “if you were damned then you would have died and raised up your head in another world: the world where death continues and the wrath of God is poured out forever. We are still here on earth, where God’s wrath remains only for a little while longer as we await the fulfillment of man’s redemption. Like I told you before, I have merely given you the ears to hear the groans of nature.”. I continued to follow the ghostly shadow down the path until we arrived at a small brook. On the other side of the brook was a field. The field was brown and barren, Laden with fallen limbs and dead saplings. Then the shadow spoke to me saying, “wash your eyes in the water of the brook.”. I kneeled to the ground and splashed the water into my eyes. As I proceeded to wash my eyes, the deafening screams I had heard before became increasingly faint until they finally vanished. However, when I lifted my eyes towards the field I saw a spring boiling out of the ground. I took the beam of my flashlight and saw that surrounding the spring were the carouses of dozens of animals. In terror I watched the crows and buzzards land next to the spring and eat the gore until they vomited. “What does this mean?” I asked the shadow. The shadow, now barely visible in the middle of the field while shimmering in the darkness between the end of my flashlight’s capabilities and the blackness of the unknown, replied as if whispering in my ear “What you see is because the blood of the innocent has been poured into this dirt. The dirt, in retaliation, has poisoned this spring. It is human greed that planted innocent blood in this sod, so death is what they will reap. The birds that you see have been cursed to eat away at what remains because there are still men in this land who benefit from the taking of life”. While trying to process what I had just been told, I rose to my feet and began to walk towards the middle of the field. As I was walking I began to hear the roar of flames and feel a warm wind brush against my face. I turn my head to find that the forest I had just trodden was now engulfed by fire. Now fearing for my life, I ran towards the dark figure only to find that he had disappeared from the center of the field. The fire continued to progress beyond the forest and into the field. Then amidst the flames i see the shadow figure in the fire as if he were a part of the flame himself. Instantly I was surrounded by a circle of fire and within that circle was ash as though it had already been burnt. The spirit commanded, “take off your shoes. Then, once you have felt the heat against the soles of your feet, pick up the ash with your hands and rub them together.”. I did as the figure asked. The ash was hot enough to burn my hands and feet, but I no longer feared for my life as I did before. The shadow invited me to walk into the fire and, though reluctantly, I stepped into the flame to follow him. With my every step the fire moved out of the way similar to the way water does with oil. Soon enough I found myself outside of the flames, however, the fire remained behind us burning up everything seconds after we walked over it. Perhaps it was because of my then now bare feet, but I could feel the rumbling of the ground to a greater degree than prior. As we continued to walk, the barren field soon turned to pasture and the rumbling from the ground began to lessen in degree. Though the pasture was much greener than the barren field we had come from, the flames behind us burned at the same pace. To add to the oddity, the radiant heat from the fire began to feel on my legs the way a hot stove feels to an unprotected hand. Nevertheless, we continued to hike from landscape to landscape for what felt like hours with nothing in our tracks but smoke and ash and the development of fire towards extreme levels. The flames, now tripled in visibility and heat, finally paused at the bank of a large river. I looked towards the east and saw that this mighty river flowed from the small brook I had used to wash my eyes. The figure I had been following was on the opposite side of the bank, but now no longer vailed as a shadow. The being stood at the edge of the bank in complete sunlight and as clear as I could see another human standing in front of me now. Across the river I saw what I can best describe as a mirror image of the land I had just traveled, yet the ground did not shake, nor was there violence or death, a fire was present but it’s flames could not destroy, and the creatures could feel but their senses had advanced beyond pain. In awe of what I had seen, I attempted to swim across the river. As I swam through the rough waters the beautiful image on the other side began to fade into darkness and I fell asleep out of exhaustion. Now I am haunted with the horror of my present reality, and the beauty of the vision I saw. While I no longer hear the voices of trees or the rage of the earth shaking the ground, I still go regularly to the edge of the river bank, in the quietness of the night, in hopes that I will see again what I saw that early Sunday morning. Perhaps my smoke filled lungs were causing hallucinations. It is an additional possibility that my brain has communicated this story to me in an attempt to make sense of the fire that deteriorated most of my hometown into ash. But maybe I truly saw what I have described here to you.

Hi all! I would really appreciate some feedback on my first chapter! I've rewritten this opening far too many times to count and feel I'm too stuck in the deep to really gauge whether or not it's any good. I'd love to know whether this would be enough to engage your interest as a reader.

The story is set in Victorian Britain, so the writing is intentionally formal at times. Hopefully not to the point it's off-putting.

Thank you so much in advance! (Word count:2391)

Tread softly t’ward the apple tree, 

When moon is bright no creatures stir, 

And heed the dreams that summon thee,

Or darkness’ wrath you will incur.

I am the fruit, the juices sweet,

I am the roots that burrow deep. 

The gift, the curse, the blessing, oh! 

I am the spectre of the night, 

I am the harvest and the blight. 

Blessed shall be the ones who mourn, 

All flesh to feed the earth below. 

Fear not the pricking of the thorn,

Where the bone blossoms grow. 

Translated from Old Gaelic circa 1850. 

The origin of the piece and its translator is unknown. 

Chapter One - Addy 

Addy wanted to scream. A full bodied, soul-baring, throat-ripping banshee scream. She grinned at the thought. 

“I dare you,” Deedee whispered, a gleam of mischievous glee in her eyes. 

Addy glanced at her parents. Mama was reading some kind of society pamphlet and Papa was busy with his breakfast. A scream would certainly bring some excitement. She bit down on her laugh at the thought of their faces, but then thought of the reprimand she’d receive and shook her head. 

Deedee scoffed. “They probably wouldn’t notice anyway. You’re invisible.” 

Addy winced and shot her friend a glance. “That’s not fair.” 

Deedee shrugged. “But it’s not wrong either.” 

Frowning, Addy crumbled a bit of toast on her plate, the crumbs scattering across the pristine white tablecloth. The silence pressed down on her, broken only by the ticking of the grandfather clock and the rasp of paper as Mama turned a page. 

“I had a wonderful dream last night,” Addy declared, her voice loud in the too-quiet room. 

“Did you?” Mama murmured as Papa made an acknowledging sort of grumble. Addy shot Deedee a triumphant look before launching into her story. 

“There were these little fairies dancing in the woods, and there was a river with a singing mermaid. Then a giant frog came out of the water and we all got on its back and had a tea party as it swam down the stream.” 

Tick. Tick. 

The moment stretched out. 

“Mama?” Addy pressed, resolutely ignoring Deedee who was grinning smugly, pleased to be right yet again. Mama turned the page and exclaimed, her eyes widening. 

“Oh, how darling! Edward, look.” She lifted the page and showed him a picture. He looked up from his breakfast, peering down the table. 

“What is it, dearest?” he asked, his voice holding his customary tone of affectionate indulgence. 

“The new bonnet design. Look at the flowers inside the rim, isn’t that charming!” 

“Charming. And rather expensive I imagine, Edith,” Papa said carefully, and Mama pouted prettily before lowering the pamphlet. 

“Perhaps we can–”

“Not here, darling.” Papa shot a glance at Addy, who was watching them sullenly. 

Mama sighed, toying with one of the curls that framed her face, turning back to her reading. Pressure expanded in Addy’s chest and she grit her teeth, tearing her toast into tinier chunks. She ignored Deedee’s delighted chortle of anticipation, a wicked smile on her face as she sensed what Addy was about to do. The scream built up inside of her, tingling through her nerves; Addy opened her mouth, ready to– 

The door swung open and Vivi stepped in. Addy’s scream deflated instantly, her teeth clicking shut as she watched her older sister glide into the room. Immaculate as always, today she wore a cornflower blue dress, her hair perfectly curled and coiffed in its usual artful bun. Flowers were embroidered along the hem and sleeves of the dress, like she was a faerie queen draped in wildflowers. Vivi wasn’t soft and pretty like Mama was; her features were too strong for that with her thick lips, straight nose, and heavy brow. But there was something compelling about her face, a sharp intelligence in her eyes that Addy wished she could see in her own face. She took too closely after Mama, and there was many a time she’d sat in front of the mirror, changing her expression to see if she could find someone else looking out at her. Vivi floated into the room, and Addy scowled, glancing down at her own dress the colour of boiled salmon, the lace already itching at her throat. 

“Perfect perfect Vivi,” Deedee said in singsong, a mocking edge to her smile. “That colour is too delicate for her.” 

Addy looked at the way her sister’s dark brown hair contrasted with the light blue, her skin like fresh cream, the dress bringing out the green in her hazel eyes and wished for once that Deedee was right. 

Vivi sat in her usual seat opposite Addy, murmuring a polite good morning to their parents before pouring herself some tea. 

“Is it the opera tonight, Vivi?” Mama asked hungrily, a gleam in her eyes.

Vivi shifted in her seat. “Dinner at Caroline’s for her birthday; tomorrow is the opera.” 

“How wonderful.” There was a strange emphasis on her last word and Papa coughed slightly, shooting Mama an unreadable expression. 

“Yes, I’m looking forward to it.” Vivi paused, taking another sip of her tea before carefully placing the teacup in the saucer. “Actually, Mama, there’s something I’d like to talk to you about.” 

“Yes?” 

“My dress. For tonight. It’s the moss green I’ve worn to a number of occasions now and…people are starting to notice. And comment. I was wondering if I could purchase a new dress, just the one, it would be–” 

Mama shook her head firmly. “That is out of the question. I have told you this before, Vivi, we simply do not have the extra funds to purchase you new dresses whenever you like. Your father works hard enough as it is. You should be grateful I have dresses to give you, and that you fit them, seeing as your shoulders are so much broader than mine.” 

Vivi pursed her lips, straightening said shoulders before she nodded. “Apologies, Mama, I only thought to ask.” 

“I have a yellow dress you can wear tonight if you like,” Mama said, waving a hand graciously. “Although it will draw attention to that nose of yours. It’s a shame you inherited that from your father.” She covered her mouth and trilled a laugh. Vivi’s smile was tight, her lips thin as she carefully slid a piece of toast free from the toast rack. Addy felt a twinge of pity that quickly died when Vivi’s hazel eyes, a mirror of Mama’s and filled with ire, snapped up to latch on Addy. 

“Addy,” she sighed, a moue of disapproval pulling at her mouth. “Your hair. Did Mary not help you this morning?” 

Mama looked at Addy for the first time that morning and a slight frown wrinkled her brow before she consciously smoothed it. Addy flushed, her shoulders hunching up, stopping herself from reaching up and touching the hair she knew lay in a wild tangle around her head. A bramble thicket, as Vivi had often called it. 

“Mary was busy,” she murmured, plucking at the tablecloth. 

“Unacceptable.” Mama shook her head before turning to Papa. “Have you seen Addy? She looks a disgrace.” 

“Mmm? Indeed,” Papa said without looking up from the toast he was buttering. 

“Well, at least she noticed you,” Deedee muttered, glaring at Vivi from across the table. 

Addy scoffed. “Only in the same way she always does.” She realised too late what she’d done and looked up quickly, wincing when she saw Vivi’s eyes flicking between her and Deedee. 

“What have I said about your doll, Addy?” Vivi said sanctimoniously. “You’re far too old now to continue with these childish games. You really shouldn’t still be bringing that thing to the table.” 

“That thing?” Deedee screeched, bead eyes blazing. 

“She’s not a thing, she’s my friend,” Addy hissed, rage instantly sizzling in her veins. 

Vivi rolled her eyes. “She’s a doll, not a friend. You–” 

“How would you know what a friend is anyway?” 

“Because I actually have them,” Vivi snapped. 

Rage and hurt roiled in Addy’s belly. “They’re not your friends. They just tolerate you. And you tolerate them. Because of George.” 

Vivi flushed, a muscle in her jaw ticking. 

“Oh, really, Vivi. You’ve not still got your sights on George Fontescu, have you? I’ve told you before, he’s not the right man for you. You have to find a love match.” Mama tutted, disappointment on her face. 

“I’m not naive, Mother,” Vivi said carefully. “A love match isn’t practical. I–” 

There was a polite knock at the door and Wilson appeared, a silver platter in his hands. “The post, sir,” he said formally, looking all the world like he hadn’t just interrupted an argument. Papa gestured for the butler to enter and looked through the post, taking his before motioning for Wilson to present the tray to Mama. She grabbed her letters, the conversation abandoned, and rifled through eagerly, the light in her eyes dimming and a frown of disappointment gracing her face. 

“Perhaps the invitations haven’t yet been issued…” she murmured before glancing up at Vivi. “Have you had word of the Sandringham Ball?” 

Vivi delicately cleared her throat. “Caroline received her invitation last week. She….asked me to accompany her.” 

Mama’s face clouded and she stiffened. “I see.” She toyed with the post she’d received, turning them over and over in her hands. Addy shifted in her seat and shot a glance at Deedee. Mama was always in a worse mood after she’d felt snubbed. The silence stretched taut, the sound only broken by the rasp of paper as Papa read through his letters. The knock at the door was a relief, and Vivi and Addy both looked up hopefully as Mary appeared in the room. 

“This just came for you, ma’am,” she said in her soft Scottish burr, a long, thin package in her arms. “Shall I take it up to your room?” 

Mama dropped her post and jumped to her feet, the spark returning to her eyes. “No, Mary, leave it here.” She took the box and balanced it on her seat, lifting the lid and smiling as she revealed the new maroon gown that lay inside, wrapped in tissue paper. Addy shot a glance at Vivi, whose eyes had hardened, her lips pressed tight. 

“It’s not the Paris Green I wanted,” Mama moaned with clear disappointment. “But Madame Arquette said the bodice was the latest design.” She drew the dress from its box and held it against herself admiringly. 

“What do you think, Edward?” Mama called, twisting this way and that, like she was dancing with the dress. 

“Very nice, dear,” Papa murmured, not looking up from the letter. His brows were furrowed, one finger tracing the curve of his greying moustache as he read. Addy’s stomach squirmed, inexplicably unnerved by the look of bewildered confusion on Papa’s face. 

Mama stilled, head cocked as she looked at her husband. “What is it, darling?” she enquired, still clutching the dress. 

“I’ve been left an inheritance,” Papa said slowly. 

Vivi’s eyes widened, and Addy shot a look at Mama, who stood frozen, an inscrutable expression on her face. Addy hadn’t realised had any family left. Her parents hadn’t told her very much about her family, but she knew her paternal grandparents had passed years before. 

“From a distant cousin. In Ireland.” 

Mama looked thoughtful. “I didn’t know you had relatives in Ireland.” 

“Neither did I.” Papa tapped the letter against the table, chewing his lip. 

“Did your cousin recently pass away?” Vivi asked. “Was it because of the Famine?” 

“I would hardly know, Vivi. And the letter gives nothing away.”

Vivi leaned forwards, a light in her eyes. “I read recently about the migrations caused by the Famine, perhaps–”

“I wouldn’t concern yourself with such complicated things, dear,” Papa murmured, eyes fixed on the letter.

Irritation flashed across Vivi’s face and she sat back in her chair. 

“What will you do, darling?” Mama asked. 

“The letter is signed by a Mr Roberts, of Irving and Roberts. He’s based in London but says he’s been contacted by their branch in Dublin. I’ll arrange to speak to him as soon as I can.”

“I wonder where in Dublin your cousin lived,” Mama mused, excitement growing on her face. “Have you inherited the house?” 

“The letter only says to contact Mr Roberts, Edith dear. I have as much information as you do.” 

“Perhaps it would fetch a good price. Or perhaps a change of scene would be exciting. Dublin is a big city is it not?”

Vivi jerked. “Yes, but they have just had years of plague and famine, Mama. I doubt the city has escaped unscathed. Certainly not from the articles I’ve been reading.” 

“I wouldn't believe everything they write about in the papers. It’s all sensationalism.” Mama waved her hand, her diamond ring glittering in the weak sunlight that struggled through the window. 

“But Mama,” Vivi said firmly, and Addy looked at her in surprise, “it cannot all be unfounded. They can’t just write lies.” 

Mama looked slightly startled before scoffing. “Don’t be so dramatic, Vivi. You know they embellish the truth.” 

“That doesn’t detract from the fact there is a crisis happening. You cannot just ignore that.” 

“Enough, Vivi,” Papa said sternly. 

Vivi’s jaw tightened, and she lowered her eyes, murmuring an apology. Addy shared a look with Deedee, unused to seeing Vivi being so contrary. Papa folded the letter and tucked it into his breast pocket, draining his cup of tea after checking the time. 

“I should be off. Be good for your mother, girls.” Addy couldn’t help but notice there was a slight lightening in his demeanour, like a weight had been removed from his shoulders, and an expression of deep contemplation remained fixed on his face. He stood, giving Mama another long kiss before leaving the dining room. 

“Well, isn’t this exciting,” Mama gushed, clapping her hands together. “What a stroke of luck.” 

Vivi was staring down at the table, biting her lip as she remained deep in some unfathomable thought. Addy kicked her feet, eyes darting between Mama and Vivi, noting the contrasting emotions in each. Her own stomach twisted and her skin tingled with anticipation. Excitement unfurled in her chest, making her almost jittery, and she shared a grin with Deedee. Dublin. A new city. Perhaps that was exactly the adventure she was yearning for.

Lord Foeyr, clad in rose gold armor, said: "The Allegiance is to the party, not to the king." (His voice booms through the hall, resonating with conviction as he sat in his throne, the light reflecting off his diamond crown.) "Do not mistake my loyalty for submission mortal"

A Nobleman, in the utterly posh accent: "Ah, of course, Sir. My dearest apologies for any offense on my part. I was merely sent on a mission to gather allies."

Lord Foeyr: "Go find your 'allies' elsewhere worm" (he followed this remark by a chuckle that reverberated throughout the hall)

Nobleman: "You dont understand, dear sir. It is not a choice;the lord has decreed it."

Lord Foeyr: "Go Mortal! You have tested my patience long enough! Depart before I smite you down to the depths of the Nether!" (His voice exuded anger)

Nobleman: "Then you leave me with no choice but to-how do I put this-end your existence on Earth. But please, don’t be upset; you may yet live a good life in another realm."

This was the tipping point for the God of Trade. He at once summoned his weapon for the century, Deathsong, A blade forged in nether, created from sacrifice of a thousand soldiers. He lept right at the nobleman, his jump strong enough to shatter the ground and the golden throne. In mid air the king realised the nobleman was nowhere to be seen, and so he landed softly-still shattering the ground. He looked around for a moment only to feel a tickling sensation in his upper back-the nobleman had buried a long sword in the muscular god's back.

Lord Foeyr: "Thou art utter filth. It only just tickles."

Just as he finished, he saw the nobleman right in front of him appearing ought of thin air as if the man traversed realms-a preposterous thought. He threw Deathsong right at the nobleman who, as if ordained by a god, shattered the blade mid air, splitting it into a thousand pieces and redirected them each to pierce the god. "Impossible" the god thought to himself.

Lord Foeyr: "It seems I underestimated your resilience in your dying moments. 'Depreses Focuium'" (The god chanted the divine summoning)

Within a flash the hall's roof disappeared, or rather transformed into a dragon, golden with black stripes. It wasted no time and flew towards the man. The Nobleman quickly dodged the dragon's rapid attacks as if he could see the future. The dragon, after a flurry of claw swipes,finally connected with the nobleman,sending him flying out of the open hall.

Nobleman: "Very good sir, a neuberian dragon"

The man summoned a weapon of his own, a thunder catalyst. He directed its beams with his mind. The dragon flew towards the man, shooting golden rocks as sharp as knives. The man's eyes went completely white and all at once the he destroyed the incoming rocks with his lightning beams emerging from the catalyst,turning the rocks into goldust. He dodged the dragon crashing towards him. Just as the dragon relocated the man, he experienced the full force of lightning, stripping it of its scales.

Seeing this, the god joined the fray and punched the nobleman flat in the face while he was distracted. The man went flying for about a kilometer. The god saw the man's body, his head made a ninety degree angle with his neck.

Lord Foeyr: "Thou gave me more trouble than any mortal i ever faced, It is a matter of great respect." (The god started walking back towards the castle and signaled his dragon to return)

Nobleman: "You gave me more trouble than any mortal I faced, the respect is mutual"

This sent a chill down the god's spine. Illusion? He asked himself. No-gods are immune to it.

Lord Foeyr: "How did you revive yourself? Even gods dont have such privledges" (The god asked, clearly frightened by the scope of the man's power)

Just then the god felt deep cuts on his back. He turned to see the dragon attcaking him. The dragon, it seemed was under influence. The god quickly captured the dragon by extending his hand and the dragon submerged in the god. Right then the god felt a very foreign emotion-the sign of departure from earth. When he looked at his hand he saw nothing but air. It seemed his entire vertical half of upper body blew up. The god fell to his knees and flew up into air as dust to be reborn in another realm.

The Nobleman sighed after the hard fought battle. He took down his forcefield, which reconstructed the hall and castle right as it was before and he now appeared before the throne. The god's ministers looked towards the throne in confusion, they saw the god turn to dust the moment he called the nobleman a worm.

Nobleman: "I am Rosteran, a servant of the king. Do not fear for I am not a god. The king is very willing to increase the population of his empire. He would be happy to take any refuges as permanent citizens."

The Grand minister spoke: "How did you kill the god?" (His voice trembling with fear)

Rosteran: "I sir, dont like to reveal my secrets but if it would please you I created a force fielding-an alternate plain of existence with only me and him. He lost"

Suddenly everyone present in the hall started bowing down before Rosteran. He could only interpret it as a sign of submission to the king. "The land of Uqoburg is out of the question" he said to himself, immediately planning the next course of action, fearing the disadvantage in the war.

Style: Horror maybe? I'm just going with the flow for now

Word count: 4222.

Let me know if I've got someting there or if I'm too rusty and need to start over.

Thank you!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EfGDJFQ_BHGvMCZVM3hLT6I8YM5VaGTP3oh5NFeQLE8/edit?usp=drivesdk

Hello everyone! I just wrote this in the heat of emotions I was in, it's in hungarian so sorry. Tried to translate it, sounded awkward as hell. Still please enjoy it, tell me ur opinion. And pls dont delete it!(if u rlly want it i can try and translate it sensibly)

Az élet értelme.

Sokszor feltették már ezt a kérdést: szerinted mi az élet értelme?

Rengeteg választ tudtam volna adni. Mégis semmit nem tudtam mondani.

Így fiatalon olyan üres az egész. Mondhatják, hogy ez átmeneti, mégis ijesztő. Ijesztő az, hogy ismeretlen. Ijesztő abba belegondolni, higy mi van ha mégsem múlik el? Oly sok mindent szeretnék csinálni. Ambícióval tele égek, kelek fel nap, mint nap, mégis üresnek érzem magam. Mintha nem lennének céljaim. Pedig vannak. De még sincsenek. Már nem vagyok olyan vidám, mint régen. Nem tesznek a legkisebb dolgok boldoggá, ha mégis, akkor is csupán ideiglenesen. Olyan furcsa ez számomra. Annyi mindent akarok, mégsem teszek semmit. Az univerzum rohan, én pedig állok a közepén gondolatban ragadva. Nem érzem a biztonságot. Vagy csak azt érzem? Pont, hogy az ismeretlenbe nem lépek, ez a létem vége? Annyi mindent szeretnék. Féktelenül beszélni, mindent időben megcsinálni, mégis, mégis semmit sem teszek ezekért. Lehet, hogy túl sokat akarok. Lehet, hogy képességeimet is túlmúlja, ezért nem kezdek újabb dolgokba. Látom a többieket szárnyalni. Mintha tudnák mit csinálnak. Mintha én lennék az egyedüli aki szenved, de folyamatosan. Valami kong bennem. Egy végeláthatatlan dolog, amit magam sem tudok megnevezni. Mint egy elveszett hajó a tenger közepén, viharral közelegve. Tudom mi lesz a vége, mégsem vagyok képes az elkerülésére. Fájdalmas. A kis célok elvesztek. Minden. De foggal, körömmel kapaszkodok és bízom benne, hogy egyszer megváltozok. Az elmémbe bújok. Még egy sötét dolog. Mintha azért tenném, mert kötelező. Mert muszáj. Nem azért mert akarom, a saját szabad akaratom, hanem mert muszáj. Polgári kötelességem. Vagy csak a szülőt 'elégítem'? Mintha nem is én lennék. Mintha más testébe bújnék és szerepet játszanék. Oly mindent akarok, mégis megakadok. A legelején, mindennek a gyökerén és képtelen vagyok. Vagy kénytelen vagyok? Kénytelen vagyok folytatni ezt a monoton hangot, mely oly mélyen belevéste magát elmémbe, felejteni sosem merem. Ezt a monológot is azért írom. Miért? Elmúlik még?

very early draft

I'm more scfi/horror short pieces by nature, think the Twilight Zone meets Stephen King. Decided to start an old fantasy novel I always had in the back of my head. An epic adventure that isn't what it seems to be. My writing method.

1. Free form scribble, there is much more than you see here, more unpolished

2. Go back and lightly fix/elaborate (the linked is this stage, magenta notes to self)

3. Go back deep, I save this for when the story is done start to finish, if I obsessed over every page early, I'd never finish!

4. Names/places are placeholders, all open to change

I enjoy writing plot and dialog, my weak point is descriptions people, places. I need to flesh out, usually step 3.

Interested in comment.

- Is it intriguing?

- Is it... oh boy this is rough

- I prefer brutally frank comments

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ck0h6PxpsdgPmiaucn8HYFqSBkr1zyGI/view?usp=sharing

Hi all. Curious to know if anyone has experience applying to grad programs or masters programs specializing in writing (fiction) with an unrelated undergrad degree?

I have my associates in photography, my bachelors in International Trade + Marketing, and would love to start applying for some of the fully funded grad fiction writing grad programs. The past few years I've been freelancing with different local magazines/newspapers (on the photo-side).

1. Is this a turnoff for those reviewing my application? I know it comes down a lot to the writing, however, when only 1-3% of apps are accepted, I would think they take even the most minute things into consideration?

Thanks for any help!

I'll keep it short.

I'm writing a fantasy/action/adventure/romance.

It's meant to have a dnd feel to it. Lots of action and tension (no spice)

There are two scenes one mid way and one about the second to last ch(right now it's 103k words on second edit) anyway. Once she has to basically defibrillates him to bring him around(lightning magic). The second time she literally assumes hes dead because he really seems dead even after she cast healing on him. Both times hes nearly dead. Both times he recovers. It is a reoccuring theme that she is vastly more capable and powerful than him but he insists on protecting her. Anyway. They're both long and moving scenes but I am nervous about having the same character with grievous wounds twice saved by the same love interest.

Not sure if this matters, but this is the second book and it revolved around her rescuing him from another dimension. I know that makes it sound lame but I promise theres a lot of layers to the plot.

Yo, what's up everyone.. I've always enjoyed writing and expressing myself through words. I like sitting, pondering on my thoughts, choosing my words, trying to make sense of the ideas in my mind. I am currently taking a Sociology class,, Sociology of Race and Ethnic Relations to be exact, and our professor has us writing 2-4 paper/entries a week. It's been extremely satisfying working on these papers and I've discovered how much I truly enjoy writing. I've had the temptation to share some of my entries with others, but I don't have any friends that I feel comfortable enough with doing so. Hell, I'm even too embarrassed to ask my wife to read them lmao...

So, here I am, sharing one of my final entries to this class with complete strangers lmao. This way I'm thinking, 'at least no one knows who TF I am" 🤣

Anyways, please feel free to read and critique my entry. This was in response to a Ted Talk titled, "What it takes to be racially literate."

"I couldn't pinpoint one specific part of the video that I disagreed with, (ok, I probably could lol..) but I am always hesitant to lean in too heavily on the conversation of race and systemic inequality/racism. I have personally experienced both racism and systemic inequality, and I 100% agree that we as a society could do better at recognizing and acknowledging that these things do indeed exist. However, at a certain point, it feels like focusing so much on the said racism and our differences causes just as much division and confusion as racism itself. To be completely honest, to me, racism and super "left leaning equality (I couldn't think of a better way of saying this, I hope you know what I mean, lol)" are 2 sides of the same coin. A racist, homophobic man hurling slurs and insults at a gay person/minority is just as antagonistic as a person aggressively shaming or ostracizing someone for holding traditional beliefs or assumed systemic advantages. Both sides of the coin are a result of a lack of empathy and an unwillingness to engage in respectful dialogue, which leads to even more division and misunderstands."

So i recently started writing this story titled "The life of Twila," and I really want feedback on it. However, I'm too embarrassed to share it with anyone I know IRL. Then I found this sub reddit, which seemed perfect. Anyway, here goes,

(This is how the book starts)

  If you were to ask anyone in the village of Hollydale to write a book titled "The life of Twila," they would have trouble filling out even twenty pages. To everyone in the village, Twila Marx was absolutely a peculiar girl, but by no means was she interesting. You see, she did not even really live in Hollydale. She lived in the woods outside the village, and would come and go like the wind. The villagers were more than content not to see her very often, for they certainly did not consider her one of their own. However, that did not stop the gossip and whispers everytime she visited. People would wonder about her strange habits, and what she got up to in that cottage of hers. The girl would emerge from the woods every few weeks and amble down to the convenience store for paper, ink, and sometimes basic aliments. She would walk the paths, making eye contact with no one, and never voluntarily speaking to anyone. Whenever someone made the mistake of speaking to her, she would get this look in her eyes like a cornered squirrel, and try to exit the conversation immediately. She also seemed incapable of walking in a straight line. The way she constantly stumbled and fell over things, anyone who observed her might think she was perpetually tipsy. But one thing everyone in Hollydale knew, was that she was always, *always* worried about something. If any of the villagers passed her in the street, she could be heard muttering about things things she'd forgotten to do, things she needed to do, or things that might happen when she got home. She seemed to go about her days always waiting for something to go wrong *"Twila just goes through her life worrying about this, that and the other."* the villagers would whisper between the rumors of her being a witch or fairy. Truly, no one in the village understood the queer girl. But maybe that was because no one had ever tried to.

Back in the early 90's I was flying a little prop airplane out of Bullhead City AZ. I was a student pilot and this was my check ride before I could get my pilots license. It was hot and humid so I had to have full flaps in order to get altitude. I needed that altitude in order to clear a saddle in a mountain and then turn and make my way home. Because of the high temperature and humidity, the aircraft was VERY slow to gain altitude. I approached the saddle and it looked like I might not make it. I was already a bit shaken because I had almost crashed during the touch and go at another airport. I dodged crashing and accidentally flew into the Air Space of the neighboring Air Force Base. I had an F 16 fly up next to and do a wing wiggle to chase my little gnat ass outta there. I was a giddy because I had lunch at a local casino and won $500 playing Blackjack. So, I'm flying to clear the saddle not getting much air speed and a Marine Corps helicopter pulls up beside me. The Marines in the chopper just sat there with there legs hanging out the door staring at me and perhaps about to witness a crash. I swear to God I thought I saw them betting money on if I was gonna crash or not.🤣🤣 I cleared the saddle and banked towards the west to get back to my airport, Fox Field in Lancaster,Ca. Back then, airplanes didn't have GPS. We navigated by radio signal called LOREN C. You really had to pay attention or you could fly off course. It was a 2 hour flight back home and I used the California Aqueduct as a landmark to guide me. I really love to fly solo and watch the scenery roll by at 5K feet of altitude. I saw the runway ahead of me so I cut power and started to desend. But something was amiss..I was attempting to land at the wrong airstrip. Turns out I was 10 miles south of my destination and was entering restricted airspace at the Lockeed Skunk Works in Palmdale. All of sudden, they jammed my instruments and my radio to call the tower was dead. I realized my mistake and kept flying to get distance away from there. I kept trying to radio the tower when all of a sudden the Air Traffic Controller came on the radio. My flight instructor called him Bilious Bob because he was an asshole that loved to yell at student pilots like myself. I called for permission to approach a clearly perturbed voice came on and said "Who the hell is this and, where the hell did you come from!!" The jamming took me off the radar and I appeared out of the sky like a ghost. I stammered my call sign, got chewed out and got permission to approach. I landed a bit shaken...but DANG! I had a hell of a story!!🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Dipping my toes in and trying to get a feel for (very) short story writing. TIA

“You’re not supposed to be up here.”

She’d seen me before I’d seen her. Or, more likely, she’d heard me cursing my way through the hole in the gate. It was a tighter fit than I’d remembered.

I saw her, then, backed defensively up against the ledge, halfway across. A delicate-looking young thing. Thin jacket, mismatched leggings, old trainers. She wasn’t exactly dressed for the weather, though it was one of those days where the skies were caught in two minds.

I stepped forward slightly, extricating myself from the tangle of saplings that had taken root between the cracked buttresses. Her eyes widened slightly.

“You know, you’re absolutely right,” I chuckled, hands raised apologetically. “Janet - my wife, that is - she’d go spare if she found out I was clambering up here again. ‘It’s a deathtrap, that old bridge,’ she says, ‘not a bloody shortcut!’”

She looked away.

“Cracking view though, in’t it?” I continued. “That why you’re up here, n’all?”

She didn’t reply, instead glancing over her shoulder at the drop below. It was a bleak morning, a lingering mist disguising the early blooms of springtime, and the woods on either side of the river below were quiet and still.

It was as she turned her head that I noticed the bruising around her neck.

“You’re not supposed to be up here,” she repeated softly.

Without another word, she turned and climbed up on to the ledge. I lunged towards her, too slow, too late. The hood from her jacket tore off into my hand and she dropped, silently, into the water below.

“That’s quite a tale, Mr. Harris.” “It’s the truth,” I insisted, my voice trembling. “And nothing but.” “Well,” came the curt reply, lip curled dismissively. “That will be for the jury to decide.”

Intro to my short story. Genre: Psychological horror/ horror Always happy to hear what you think 😁

Darkness enveloped everything. It shrouded the physical world and thoughts alike, leaving the other senses starving, yearning. The taste of iron in his mouth—blood? A sweet-foul smell, hanging in the icy air. The sound of rapid breaths bouncing against a surface above his face—not the traditional echo from a distant object, rather the sound bouncing back from a too-close surface, a sort of pre-echo. Were his eyes open at all? He reached a hand to his face, blinked, and felt his lashes brush against his open palm. They were open, albeit it seemed darker than when they were shut. He grimaced as he felt at his forehead, the skin was broken and a dormant headache reignited itself. He began probing around the void with his hands, like the tentacles of a deep-water squid, looking for food in the darkness of the ocean. He was on his back. Reaching up tentatively into the void, his knuckles rapped against a solid, smooth surface, a hand’s-breadth above his forehead. He found the same confining surface to his right, and to his left…someone else lay beside him, unmoving and silent as the darkness. He reached his arm over the person. The stranger’s head was bald, and they wore no clothing. Pressing a finger to their throat—in the awkward position that the confines demanded—he felt for a pulse, but the tell-tale throbbing of life was non-existent. The ironic hope he had felt at the prospect of having a companion in the box, was killed. It was himself, the darkness and the corpse. Reality settled down on him. He wished he were alone. Anything but sharing the space with this carcass. He screamed and thrashed in the suffocating enclosure. He pressed his palms and knees against the ceiling, pushing as hard as he could, it didn’t budge. A deep horror welled up from within his gut, like a thick oil, burbling into his chest. He was drowning! He began pounding the floor with taught fists. Punching the wall. The ceiling again. He bumped the corpse. Dear God! The walls, the walls were closing in. He was going to be crushed with the stranger. He already imagined the sensation of being mushed into the corpse, both of them becoming one mixture of bones and meat. He screamed, he howled, the terror defied normal speech. He was being pressed tighter against the lump of skin and clothes. Their hands brushed against each other. The corpse is alive! He lurched to sit upright, and received a polite reminder of the ceiling’s existence, in the form of a white shock, flashing through his skull.

You can read the rest of the short story for free on my Google drive link. It's about a 15 min read:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-EUh3X6kjAPI0HO26BfvX18P8XCgJotC/view?usp=drivesdk